LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



REASON vs. REVELATION 



FROM THE FULCRUM 
OF THE SPIRIT PHILOSOPHY 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGER80LL. 



BY 

/ 

JOHN H. KEYSER, 



> v 



/7" 




NEW YORK: 

PRESS OF J. J. LITTLE & CO., 

10 to 20 Astor Place. 

1888. 






"Hour by hour, like an opening flower, 

Shall truth after truth expand ; 
The sun may grow pale and the stars may fail, 

But the purposes of God shall stand. 
Dogmas and Creeds, without kindred deeds, 

And altar and fane shall fall ; 
One bond of love, and one home above, 

And one faith shall be to all." 



Entered according" to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, 

By JOHN H. KEYSER, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



" On Scotia's hills the go wans spring, 
The heather blooms and a' that — 
The mavis and the merle sing, 
But Heaven's my home for a' that. 
I wadna' change for a' that ; 
He who once finds the Heaven aboon 
Will not come back for a' that — " 

— Spirit Robert Burns. 



REASON OR REVELATION ; WHICH? 
THE KEY NOTE. 

" It is lawful for man to search after truth in any realm. Reason 
was given him that he might investigate all things, to the end that 
truth should appear. It is superstition that hinders man from looking 
into any manifestation of nature or human nature, and having seen its 
effects, learning if possible its cause. The mistakes that many make is 
in placing reason and science above intuition and revelation. There 
can be no exercise of reason unless the spirit of man is inspired, or 
intuitively drawn into reasoning, and there can be no knowledge of sci- 
ence save through a direct revelation of that science to some person. 
Cold, calm, uninspired reason is the marble statue compared with the 
living body : in one you see all there is ; in the other are possibilities 
undreamed of by those who are guided by reason alone. 
• " Reason is bounded and circumscribed by the brain of man ; intui- 
tion, which is the reasoning faculty of the spirit, is boundless in its pos- 
sibilities ; hence when man attempts to act from reason alone, he is 
acting independent of and disconnected from all divine things, and his 
teachings and life have little or no effect ; since, if there be no spiritual 
fountain from which reason draws a supply, it can have no enduring 
influence on men or things. It was my practice to use my reason on 
all occasions, and to pray that my reason might be enlightened and in- 
spired by divine wisdom, and I often found that reason was left far in 
the background, and intuition led me into realms of revealed thought 
which reason alone could never have reached." — William Ellery Chan- 
ning (spirit-voiced). 



AN EXPLANATORY WORD. 



In reading the very interesting and instructive con- 
troversy between Mr. Field, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Inger- 
soll, I was grieved as a believer in the immortality of the 
human soul, in the being and attributes of an overruling 
Providence, and in the Christ of humanity, who lived a 
mortal life among the children of earth as the Nazarene ; 
that the able writers who have championed the Christian 
belief had, in their zeal to fortify the dogmas of theology, 
placed the cardinal principles of true religion in serious 
jeopardy, and gravely mis-stated the issue through exces- 
sive zeal in endeavoring to defend the Old and New 
Testament records as the inspired word of God without 
explanation or comment. It was this impossible task 
that gave their opponent the easy weapons not only to 
annihilate them in the argument, but to do incalculable 
harm to the religion of Jesus Christ, pure and simple, by 
holding up the monster Jehovah of the Jews as the great 
All Father, the oversoul of the universe. 

It is because I protest in the name of true religion 
against being placed in this false position by creedal the- 
ology that I indite this reply which was originally 
intended for a pamphlet article, but has grown into the 
dimensions of a small book. 

I assume that no writer, not imbued with the truths of 
the spiritual philosophy, is competent to combat the fal- 
lacies and errors of agnostics like Mr. Ingersoll, but from 



6 AN EXPLANATORY WORD. 

the thesis of spirit communion the work is easy, the pre- 
mises indisputable that the spirit of man lives after the 
death of the body, and will live forever. In fact, it is 
the thesis of the Bible records, and to-day the ostracised 
disciples of the spiritual philosophy occupy toward their 
age precisely the position which the early Christians oc- 
cupied toward the ruling powers among the Hebrew 
nation. The gifts of the Spirit were being poured out 
then as now, and the fiercest opposition to the truths 
taught by the patient Saviour were from the ecclesiastics 
and the governing classes. 

The primitive church in its early struggles and per- 
secutions would fairly represent the condition of spirit 
communion to-day, and it is to rescue the truth in its 
purity, simplicity, and its grandeur from the false position 
in which creedal theology has placed it, by " teaching for 
doctrines the commandments of men," that I raise my 
voice in pleading admonition. 

Our firm endeavor has been in presenting a few of many 
aspects of the spiritual philosophy in its higher revealings 
to account for the inaccuracies, apparently strange con- 
tradictions, and seemingly palpable errors of the Bible 
records, to winnow the truth from the errors of creeds, 
to fix in the mind of the thoughtful reader the one patent 
fact that the Bible Records as a whole, to be at all compre- 
hended, must be spiritually discerned. 

We have studiously avoided magnifying this beautiful 
and satisfying theory of the spirit philosophy at the 
expense of the records themselves, but rather strove to 
prove their verity, and not like Cardinal Manning, who 
in his zeal to fortify the Romish Church in her claim to 
infallibility and precedence, has with undue haste and 
in a factious and unkindly spirit, rushed into print 
simply to boom the Church at the expense of other 



AN EXPLANATORY WORD. 7 

creeds, in his contribution to this deeply important con- 
troversy ; and this may account for our not having trav- 
ersed his specious reasonings, because in our judgment 
he did not reason the case with regard to enlightening 
his readers upon the important subject matter in con- 
troversy, but rather to prove a dogma which, if ever so 
clearly proven, could not in a remote degree demonstrate 
the immortality of the soul or the verity of the Scripture 
Eecords. 

There were simply no arguments to refute. Hence 
we refrain, but with no unkindly feeling to the ancient 
church whose Christly mission among the lowly is not to 
be lightly esteemed, for we recognize in the childlike 
faith and unquestioning devotion of her votaries the 
germs of great spiritual truths, which though immured in 
theological errors will, in their blossoming and fruition, 
merge all peoples into the one divine spirit as it is in Jesus 
Christ. 

In searching after revealed truth, the earnest, candid, 
truth-loving mind unavoidably gravitates toward skep- 
ticism, and not un-often into hopeless unbelief in a here- 
after, in an immortal existence, if he trusts only to naked 
Eeason and takes her for his guide. 

Such was my personal experience in early life, and into 
ripening manhood, because of a lack of some, to me, posi- 
tive evidence that the soul of man lived after the death of 
the body. I struggled with my conscience for long 
years, to force myself into the common beliefs of modern 
theology, but to no purpose, until in hopeless despair I 
closed the lids of the Old and New Testament records as 
a mass of unbelievable statements of the origin and destiny 
of the human soul, and went out into the darkness of total 
unbelief in what was termed revealed religion, unsatisfied, 
sad and despairing. I had been taught by a praying 



8 AN EXPLANATORY WORD. 

mother to lisp the name of the Saviour in the deepest 
reverence, and to say, 

" Now I lay me down to sleep, 

I pray the Lord my soul to keep ; 
And should I die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take." 

But calm, naked reason wrestled with all the Sunday- 
school problems, and my mother's loving lessons were 
relegated into the domain of unbelievable nursery tales 
that I could not comprehend, and that my reason would 
not allow me to accept. 

From respect to my mother's memory I was never a 
scoffer, neither did I seek to fortify my unbelief by read- 
ing skeptical books. Indeed, I deeply deplored my in- 
ability to receive and accept my early teachings, and even 
kept it an unwelcome secret in my despairing heart, that I 
was compelled to close the lids of the Bible records for- 
ever, because all my affiliations were with those who 
claimed to be Christians. 

But I had to be true to myself, and this led me into the 
valley of doubt and finally of total unbelief, against my 
will and inclination. For many years I groped on in 
spiritual darkness, hopeless of a future life, until in a 
period of deep mental struggle and adversity, a light sud- 
denly broke upon my benighted vision, and the whole 
course of my temporarily unhappy life was changed by 
this experience. 

I was no longer alone, no longer in doubt as to the 
future life, the immortal life, for my own loved ones who 
had passed into the beyond, came back, spoke to me in 
the old familiar way, and ministered unto me. 

My own dear mother was the first to greet her wayward 
child, and to pour into my darkened soul the sweet consola- 



AN EXPLANATORY WORD. 9 

tary fact that the spirit lives and lives forever. Language 
fails me in expressing the ecstasy of that precious revelation 
that the human spirit cannot die, that it is an infinites- 
imal portion of Deity and can no more be lost or destroyed 
than can the great, infinite heart of being that we term 
Grod — and I was joyous and satisfied. Indeed, it changed 
the whole current of my life, for it was a direct revelation 
to me from the spirit world that because they still live, I 
shall live and move and have my being upon the spirit 
side of life, because I have learned that life in the form and 
in the spirit are one and continuous, and that I am im- 
mortal. No sophistry can ever change this experience. 
It has passed with me from doubt or belief into an assured 
knowledge. 

Since that blessed experience I have never been alone, 
for I have enjoyed the frequent communion of my loved 
ones upon the spirit side of life, and have made the 
acquaintance of so many new friends in the border land, 
that I can say of knowledge, I know that the spirit lives, 
and will continue to live and progress into higher and 
higher conditions until it shall reach the angel spheres in 
the natural evolution of the spirit's destiny. 

Now, as I again open the lids of my mother's Bible, lo, 
its mystic pages glow with a new light shed upon them 
through the blissful knowledge of spirit communion, and 
it is to chronicle this knowledge that I gladly relate my 
personal experience derived from my communion with 
the denizens of the spirit side of life. 

It is because I desire to address skeptics like myself, 
who have been forced out of the saving line of creeds and 
are groping in spiritual darkness when the light is close 
beyond their vision, that I would speak a consoling 
word. 

It is because just at this time there is a deep interest in 
1* 



10 AN EXPLANATORY WORD. 

the subject of the authenticity and inspiration of the Old 
and New Testament records, called forth by the debates 
of large-minded men on either side of this vital question, 
that I would add my testimony to the verity of the records 
as I have received them through spirit communion, hoping 
that I may cheer and comfort some despairing soul, who, 
like myself, may be seeking after the truths of the im- 
mortal life. 

John H. Keyser, 



SEASON vs. REVELATION. 

FKOM THE FULCKUM OF THE SPIEITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 



In the interesting controversy between Mr. Field, Mr. 
Gladstone and Mr. Ingersoll, as recorded in the Reviews, 
it is quite evident that Mr. Field and Mr. Gladstone have 
attempted the impossible by claiming too much for the 
Old and New Testament records, and treating them as 
veritable inspirations, or as they unwisely term all the 
averments of the seers and -prophets there recorded, the 
veritable " Word of God." 

It is only as light is thrown upon the pages of Holy Writ, 
through spirit communion, that a proper and adequate 
understanding of the records can be obtained, and the con- 
troversy shows conclusively the immense disadvantage 
that a theologian, however learned, has in a contest with 
a skeptic like Mr. Ingersoll, who has them at his mercy 
only because they are aiming to prove the impossible from 
the thesis of prophetic inspiration without qualifying that 
inspiration or explaining the language of the Old Testa- 
ment seers especially, and this can only be done through 
an intimate knowledge of spirit communion, and the unerr- 
ing laws that govern all mediumship or prophetic utter- 
ances in this direction. 

With this knowledge, the attacks of a skeptic like Mr. 



12 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

Ingersoll fall harmless, and the strange and inconsistent 
statements can be readily reconciled and harmonized, where 
they now, as singled out by him, make the Jehovah of the 
Jewish theology appear a revolting monster. 

It is because I feel that the deepest injustice is being 
done to the subject as thus treated by Mr. Ingersoll, 
although his arguments are unanswerable, based upon Mr. 
Field's and Mr. Gladstone's thesis of special inspiration and 
revelation for the records as chronicled. But 

' It's a beautiful thought 
By Philosophy taught, 
That good is often 
From evil outwrought," 

and while old theology with its crude, mis-shapen theories 
of a future life is being forced to the wall by the keen 
satire of an honest skeptic like Mr. Ingersoll, he must in 
turn be subject to adverse criticism, because of his unac- 
quaintance with the laws governing spirit intercourse and 
the spiritual philosophy. 

We maintain that without this knowledge neither Mr. 
Field, Mr. Gladstone nor Mr. Ingersoll are able to deal 
with this great issue of immortality, and are alike groping 
in spiritual darkness. 

In the outset of my argument I am confronted with the 
overwhelming evidences bearing upon the subject matter, 
and the impossibility of condensing within the space of a 
pamphlet treatise the facts and arguments that should 
embrace a volume. 

Starting out with the indisputable fact that all revela- 
tions to man concerning the planet or the future life have 
come through some human brain, have we not a right to 
expect more important revelations to flow in upon us from 
the same source, with the added spiritual light now flood- 



A KEPLY TO ROBEKT G. I^GERSOLL. 13 

ing the world? Every advance of science along the high- 
way of the ages has been revealed to man through some 
mediumistic brain and is a direct message from the spirit 
world of causes. Every important invention has been 
breathed upon from this same source, and these facts are 
capable of demonstration would the limit of this article 
admit of our entering into the corollary proofs. 

All men of decided genius are necessarily impressible 
and mediumistic. Eemarkable inventors like Edison are 
aided directly, whether consciously to themselves or not; 
great musicians like Beethoven and Mozart are constantly 
breathed upon from spiritual sources to reveal the lan- 
guage of the angels — music. 

" Music moves us and we know not why. 
We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source. 
It is the feeling of another state, 
Born of its memories ; 

For what can wake the soul's strong instincts 
Of another world like music ? " 

Beethoven, in explaining to the poet Groethe the source 
of his inspirations, says frankly : 

"From the focus of inspiration I feel to let the melody 
stream forth on all sides, I follow it — passionately over- 
take it again. I see it escape me, vanish amid the crowd of 
varied excitements ; soon I seize it up again with renewed 
passion ; I cannot part from it — with quick rapture I mul- 
tiply it in every form of modulation — and at the last 
moment I triumph over the first musical thought — see, 
now ; that's a symphony." 

Mozart, too, in writing to a musical friend, as chronicled 
by his biographer Holmes, says : 

" Whence and how the thoughts come, I know not ; nor 
can I force them. Those ideas which please me I retain 



14 REASON VS. REVELATION - . 

in memory, and am accustomed, as I have been told, 
to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it 
soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to 
account, that is to say, agreeably to the rules of counter- 
point to the peculiarities of the various instruments. All 
this fires my soul, and provided I am not disturbed, my 
subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined ; 
and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete 
and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a 
fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. 

" Nor do I hear, in imagination, the parts successively ; 
but I hear them, as it were, all at once. "What a delight 
this is I cannot tell. All this inventing, this producing, 
takes place in a pleasing, lively dream. Still, the actual 
hearing of the entire whole is after all the best. What 
has been thus produced I do not easily forget, and this is 
perhaps the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank 
for." 

Socrates is made to say, in one of the famous dialogues 
of Plato, of Ion, a popular contemporary orator : 

" You, Ion, are influenced by Homer. If you recite 
the poems of any other poet, you get drowsy and are at a 
loss what to say ; but when you hear any of the composi- 
tions of that poet, your thoughts are excited and you grow 
eloquent. This explains the question you asked, where- 
fore Homer inspires you with eloquence, and no other 
poet ; it is that you are thus eloquent, not by science, 
but through divine inspiration." 

Who that may undertake to inquire into Washington 
Irving's moods and states, before writing many of his 
works, will find that he was under some spell that could 
not be explained, which was an augury of inspiration. 
The same moods painfully affected Lizzy Doton, who has 
written so many remarkable poems directly under special 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. LtfGERSOLL. 15 

inspiration. Her of whom Poe says (spirit voiced) in our 
hearing and in his peculiar characteristic language and 
inimitable meter : 

" Mortals, would you see a vision 
I have brought from fields Elysian, 
Where the trail of sin and sorrow 
Linger not on vale or stream? 
Come with me, mortal stranger, 
To a pale, sweet woman's chamber, 
Where she walks and talks with angels, 
Sleeping, talks with them in dreams. 

" Oh, the marvel and the wonder 
That doth fill this woman's slumber, 
As her spirit reaches madly 
Through the mists and shadows grim; 
Oh, the glory and the splendor 
That the angel world do send her, 
When her spirit bowed and broken 
Turns for light and help within. 

" I have often spoken faintly 
Through her lips so pure and saintly, 
And I spake with might and power, 
As I never spake before. 
For a love divinely human 
Purified this mortal woman, 
So that when I breathed upon her, 
All the discord of my spirit 
Turned to harmony once more. " 

N. P. Willis was similarly affected in composing his 
first sacred poems, and when he comes to us again, with 
the clearer vision of the spirit, we very readily recognize 
him. Listen to his incomparable Ode to Truth, given in 
our hearing (spirit voiced), which in our judgment has 
no peer upon a cognate subject in the wide field of classic 
literature : 



16 KEASON VS. REVELATION". 

" Truth sits upon the Rock of Ages, 
Calm, immovable, naked; 

Time nor change can ever touch her pale, white brow 
Save to give it. added luster. 
Truth knows no friends or enemies, 
But looks with steadfast eye into the shadowy future 
Whence the hosts of unknown souls 
Shall come to worship her. 
The past, the present, the future are hers alone ; 
Pride, hope, ambition, love, and all the attributes of man 
May pass away, and be as they had never been. 
But truth will live ; 
She holds the key to all of these : 
To her eternity is time, her realm, the universe, 
Her worshipers, the spirits of the just, 
Made perfect by their love of her. 
The power and glory of her own perfected loveliness 
Dazzles eyes not opened by the spirit 
And makes them blind. 

Truth will live and reign, until all the enemies of truth are dead. 
Then man will find his Eden in the earth, 
And dwell once more with God." 

Mr. Ingersoll frankly admits that the belief in immor- 
tality was shared by Oriental nations long before the Star 
of Bethlehem had arisen over the Judean Saviour. 

One fact alone, aside from other evidence, furnishes 
corollary proof of the existence of a great overruling 
power which we call God, and this is the almost universal 
acknowledgment of every nation on the planet, enlight- 
ened, civilized or savage, of the being and attributes of 
this great oversoul located somewhere in the universe of 
worlds. 

If Mr. Field and Mr. Gladstone had frankly admitted 
that all the Bibles of Oriental nations contained the spir- 
itual experiences of their several ages, and that the 
Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament records especially, 
recounted the early spiritual experiences of the Jews at a 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. ItfGERSOLL. 17 

period when they were slowly emerging from slavery and 
barbarism, when Moses, their law-giver and prophet, found 
it almost impossible to wean them away from idol worship, 
they could have more readily accounted for and excused 
the extravagant statements of their undeveloped seers and 
prophets who were striving to impress them (but ever 
through their own unspiritual natures and under grave 
disabilities) with a dawning spiritual consciousness, the 
first lesson of which was the knowledge of the one living 
and true God, in place of the confirmed idol worship 
gained during their captivity among the idol worshiping 
Egyptians. 

The Old Testament records are manifestly the chron- 
icles of the early spiritual history of the Hebrew race, 
and in so far as their prophets and seers were enabled to 
render the messages received from the spirit world through 
their organisms with accuracy, they were to them " the 
Word of God," but in almost or quite all the occurrences 
selected so skillfully by Mr. Ingersoll in his reply to Mr. 
Gladstone, the Jehovah of the prophets who attempted to 
voice the messages was unmistakably either messages 
received from most unprogressed spirits, or, as is not 
infrequently the case in modern experiences of spirit com- 
munion, largely colored from the normal mind of the 
medium through whom the message came, and hence 
entirely unreliable as a spirit message. 

For the interested reader to gain our meaning fully, let 
us endeavor to explain the thesis of spirit communion. 
All there is of spirit communion is the ability of mortal 
to commune with a spirit. The verity of the message 
received must ever depend upon the ability of the com- 
muning spirit to communicate through the organism of 
the medium a fact, a truth, and also the ability of the 
medium through whom the message comes to render the 



18 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

message faithfully ; often the controlling spirit labors 
under grave disabilities in having the message delivered 
faithfully, and not unoften the medium is unable to ren- 
der the message correctly, and herein lies very many of 
the dangers and errors connected with what is termed 
spirit communion. Samuel was a prophet who gave relia- 
ble messages and was esteemed among the Jews as an 
oracle, because of the reliable messages which came 
through his organism. Instance his meeting Saul, who 
then a simple shepherd boy, as Saul said, "the least of 
my father's children," and prophesying him as the future 
and first king of the Hebrew nation, and the high esteem 
he was held in as a faithful interpreter of the voice of 
the Spirit, or as they term it in theological parlance, 
" the Word of God." " 

In reading the Old Testament records the careful stu- 
dent will note this prominent fact, that all the scenes 
described in the several chronicles were distinctly and 
clearly the experiences of an undeveloped class of medi- 
ums, seers or prophets, and that they were manifesting the 
human life in a peculiarly mediumistic age ; in an age 
when the people were led almost entirely by their prophets, 
and mediumship was esteemed the highest gift that could 
be conferred upon their leaders. Their prophets were 
their spiritual teachers as well, and claimed to interpret 
the will and counsels of Deity, and to our mind it was 
quite evident that they in a large measure gave verita- 
ble messages which were distinctly proved in their com- 
ing to pass. Hence it was to them the "Word of God." 
Witness the message of Samuel to the shepherd boy, 
Saul, that he would become a king over Israel, while wan- 
dering over the country to find his father's asses. 

It is told in simple language in the 9th chapter 1st 
Samuel, and if the reader will follow the revelation care- 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 19 

fully, it will serve to explain much that is confusing in 
the records themselves, because the records often state 
" Thus saith the Lord" when it should be thus saith the 
prophet, and the prophet may not always interpret the 
will of Omnipotence correctly. The record says : 

" Now the Lord had told Samuel in his ear, a day before 
Saul came, saying, To-morrow abont this time I will send 
thee a man out of the laud of Benjamin, and thou shalt 
anoint him to be captain over my people Israel. And 
when Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said unto him (i. e. by 
the mouth of the prophet, an interpolation), Behold the 
man I spoke to thee of, the same shall reign over my peo- 
ple," all of which came duly to pass, even according to 
secular history. Samuel was a most reliable seer, and 
interpreted the divine decrees with singular accuracy ; in 
fact, was such an oracle that his messages were never 
gainsaid. This will become more apparent as we recite 
the conversation between the two shepherd boys who 
sought out Samuel to divine for them where their lost ani- 
mals were. Saul's companion says, verse 6, chap. 9, 
" Behold now, there is in this city a man of God ; and he 
is an honorable man ; all that he saith cometh surely to 
pass, now let us go thither; peradventure he can show 
us the way we should go." Again, verse 9th explains the 
subject matter more definitely where the distinction and 
similarity are noted, " Before time, in Israel, when a man 
went to inquire of Grod, thus he spake : Come, and let us 
go to the seer, for he that is now called prophet was before 
time called a seer. Then said Saul to his servant, Well 
said ; come, let us go. So they went into the city where 
the man of G-od was." 

But we desire to draw the distinction still plainer between 

" thus saith the Lord " and thus saith the controlling 

medium, because it is from apparent unacquaintance with 



20 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

this important distinction that has led Mr. Ingersoll to 
impute many of the cruel and wicked things attributed 
by him to Jehovah, which were simply the utterances of 
the controlling spirit through the mouth of the seer, and 
this controlling spirit may have been, nay was, just the 
demoniac character that Mr. Ingersoll describes, and was 
undoubtedly materially aided by the unprogressed and evil 
disposed character of the medium who was assuming to 
interpret the will of Jehovah, and it is just here where all 
the errors have arisen which place "thus saith the Lord" 
in such strained and revolting relations, to make Jehovah 
seem from the unexplained record simply a monster. 
Let us therefore study the mediumship or seership of 
Balaam and Balak recited in 22d chapter of Numbers, 
because the line of distinction is so plain that he who runs 
may read. 

The story runs thus : Moses, the great law-giver of the 
Hebrews, had, in leading the people through Canaan, 
defeated the Canaanites and pitched his tents upon the 
Plains of Moab, on their way toward the promised land. 
Balak, King of Moab, was seized with panic for fear of 
the Israelite hosts and sent for Balaam, a wise and reliable 
prophet in whom he had great faith, to come and curse 
these new enemies, believing that Balaam had the spiritual 
power through his seership to aid him in overcoming his 
enemies. This peculiar case proved the confidence that 
these mediuinistic people had in their prophets, and points 
to a universal custom of asking divine aid through their 
mediums. The case of Balaam and Balak proves still 
another very important feature in spirit communion, which 
is as true to-day as in the childhood of the Jews, and that 
is, if the medium is grounded in truth, the messages from 
the spirit side of life must of a certainty be reliable, and 
are veritable prophecies. It is in this view that the case 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 21 

herein cited is of deep importance. Balaam was a seer 
grounded in the truth, and no spirit could gain possession 
of his organism while in a state of entrancement to deceive 
or give a false message. Therefore when Balak called 
upon him, he said to the seer frankly (22d chap. Numbers), 
" Come now, curse me this people, for they are too mighty 
forme. Perad venture that we may smite them, and that I 
may drive them out of the land ; for I wot that he whom 
thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed." 
Then Balak sent the elders of Moab and Midian to 
Balaam " with the rewards of divination in their hand " 
(i e. the shekels to pay for the message, an interpolation), 
and they came and spake unto him the words of Balak. 

"And he said unto them, Lodge here this night, and I 
will bring you word again as the Lord shall speak unto me. 

"And Balaam said unto God, Balak, King of Moab, has 
sent unto me saying, 

"Behold, there is a people come out of Egypt which 
covereth the face of the earth : come now, curse me them ; 
peradventure I shall be able to overcome them and drive 
them out. 

"And God said unto Balaam, Thou shalt not go with 
them ; thou shalt not curse the people : for they are 
blessed. 

"And Balaam rose up in the morning and said unto the 
princes of Balak, Get you into your land, for the Lord 
refuseth to give me leave to go with you." 

Now from the course of the simple and interesting narra- 
tive it is more than presumable, it is fairly inferable that 
Balaam in his heart and in his own normal condition 
desired to serve Balak, but being a true medium, when he 
surrendered his organism to spirit intercourse he was com- 
pelled to voice the will and language of spirit control, and 
therefore when he would have readily obeyed the wishes 



22 KEASOST VS. BEVELATIOK. 

of Balak, tlie spirit made him utter exactly the opposite 
message, for again Balak returns to the charge and invokes 
the spirit world again through Balaam (loth verse). 

" For Balak sent princes more and more honorable than 
they. 

" And they came to Balaam and said to him, Let noth- 
ing hinder thee from coming to me ; 

" For I will promote thee unto very great honor, and I 
will do whatsoever thou sayest unto me, come therefore I 
pray thee, curse me this people. 

" And Balaam answered, If Balak would give me this 
house full of silver and gold I cannot go beyond the word 
of the Lord my God to do less or more." 

Then Balaam invoked the spirit a second time with no 
better success, and while riding, his ass was thwarted with 
an apparition, which he termed an angel, and heard a voice 
which he attributed to the beast, but which was undoubt- 
edly the clairaudient voice of the controlling spirit warn- 
ing him away from further seeking in this direction. But 
still Balak persisted, and the third time seduced Balaam to 
prophesy for him. 

"And Balaam said unto Balak, Lo, I am come unto 
thee : have I now any power at all to say anything ? the 
word that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I speak." 

And after building altars in the mountains and offering 
burnt offerings again, according to custom. 

"And Balaam again took uphisparableandsaid, Balak, 
King of Moab, hath brought me from Aram, out of the 
mountains of the east, saying, Curse me Jacob and defy 
me Israel 

" How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed, and 
how shall I defy whom God hath not defied ? " 

Here we find a remarkable but authentic account of true 
mediumship, and an explanation of " thus saith the Lord," 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 23 

which correctly interpreted ever means, thus saith the 
controlling spirit through the organism of a mortal, and 
ever depending upon the truth and fixedness of purpose 
of the mortal who has thus surrendered his organism to 
spirit control must depend the verity of the message. — 
Heed the lesson. 

Whoever opens the Old Testament records with a desire 
to gain their true meaning, will assuredly find that medium- 
ship prophecy and the correlative features of modern spirit 
communion form the groundwork of all their utterances, 
and color the recitals of all their biographers. But this is 
not all there is of the records themselves, for while they 
chronicle the most revolting details of a semi-barbarous 
people, they also chronicle some of the most important 
events in the history of the planet, for wrapped up in the 
husks of mystic lore are divine mysteries which point un- 
erringly to the childhood of the planet and the history of 
the race. — The six days of creation embrace aeons of time 
and carry us so far back into the eternity behind us that 
the human mind becomes dazed in its speculations con- 
cerning them. 

In studying closely the Bible records, we find them 
filled with mysteries too deep to comprehend without that 
trained thought which must be garnered from the secret 
archives of Kabalistic books collated by the scholars and 
wise men for the common people. 

The sacred Kabbala contained precious gems of truth, 
received through tradition along down the ages, and the 
more authoritative Talmud being gleaned from the orac- 
ular teachings of their most gifted prophets, contained for 
them all there was of veritable knowledge concerning the 
origin of man and the planet itself, and when we reflect 
that all there is of facts or conjecture concerning the origin 
of things, came through revelation or impression to some 



24 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

mortal, what, we ask, more natural, possible or probable 
than that the Old Testament records, and the still more 
ancient records from which thej were derived, came to 
these impressional students as veritable truths which have 
been confirmed by much of the revelations which have 
come to man through man's organism all the way down 
the ages. Galileo and Copernicus were in degree prophets 
of their day, and added thus much to the store of revealed 
truth, revealing the will and purposes of infinity as un- 
mistakably as did any of the mystic scholars who gave us 
what theology oracularly terms " the Books of Inspira- 
tion," or " the Word of God." 

Starting from this thesis, we shall not find it difficult to 
reconcile what has been revealed to man concerning the 
origin of things, nor what is being revealed at this time 
from myriad sources through the blessed agencies of 
spirit communion. 

Naked science has very little to boast of of practical 
achievement in the realms of positive knowledge, and she 
is compelled to shift base continually through the floods 
of revelation that are coming silently through spiritual 
sources. 

The high tides of intellectual life dissociated from the 
spiritual, which dazzled the world, and culminated with 
the ascendencies of the republics of Greece and Eome, 
which also gave us many of the classic school-books of 
to-day, have apparently made the world no better, truer or 
happier, and it remains for the now dawning spiritual era 
to make better, truer and more livable conditions for 
humanity. In fact, simple intellect, however profound, 
has rarely ever fraternized or sympathized with the lower 
strata of society or done aught to make their lot more 
tolerable. They were like the Eoman Senators who went 
out of their palaces to harangue the people on the bless- 



A KEPLY TO ROBERT G. IHGERSOLL. 25 

ings of liberty in the abstract, while chained slaves guarded 
their own portals, and in our own experience, we have 
noted that the purely intellectual man had little in com- 
mon with the interests of the common people. His motto 
is, " After me the deluge." But the spirit of Christ, the 
spirit of justice which alone is born of the spiritual state 

is destined 

"To lift us to that level 
Where there is no great or least." 

" That command, ' Love one another,' 
Makes each human soul a brother ; 
Binds us all in one grand order, 
Master, Prentice, King and Priest." 

" Where an angel voice can reach you, 
And it hath the power to teach you, 
It is blessed itself, in blessing, 
For we all have mutual needs ; 
The seedling holds the seed, the flower, 
And as it opens hour by hour, 
Lo, the fruit in turn, has folded in its turn 
The tiny seed." 

But a critic like Mr. Ingersoll will say, and from his 
standpoint, truly, the same beneficent laws of love and 
justice were taught before the advent of this reputed Sav- 
iour ; and our reply is, if so, where are their fruits ? We 
maintain that the flood- tide of naked intellect was the 
most gross and desperately selfish age in the history of 
civilized man. 

We can best express our thought by quoting from one 
of the remarkable lessons given us (spirit voiced) on this 
all-important theme : 

" A human soul in its first or lowest development is 

grossly selfish in its expression through the material form, 

seeking like the animal, only its personal happiness or 

gratification. This feeling is so strong that even when 

2 



26 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

this soul gathers unto itself a family or friends, it is only 
that these may minister unto its selfish desires. 

" As with the human soul individually, so the family 
collectively, the tribe, and finally the state and the nation ; 
and the progress from the individual to the family, the 
tribe, the state, the nation, has been very slow, corre- 
sponding to the growth of the planet ; consequently you 
find in all the families and nations of the past a selfishness 
exhibited very gross which extends itself unto spiritual 
things even. 

" Hence you find the nations of the past, as well as the 
individuals, creating in their own minds a God suited to 
their development. 

" A human being can conceive of an Infinite Being only 
through its own special organization. Hence you find in 
all the nations of the past a supposed envious, jealous and 
wrathful God, a God who resented any affection or wor- 
ship given to what was called a strange god, and so 
through all the ages you will find that human souls have 
believed in a God corresponding to their own develop- 
ment. 

" The human brain develops very slowly, age upon age 
it changes in its conformation. 

" In the past ages the great men of the day had a remark- 
able development of brain. You will find that the front 
brain was very broad and high, giving the individual 
great reasoning force, yet scattered over so much ground 
that it could not focus itself into spiritual things. 

" Great changes have taken place in this respect. To-day 
your best thinkers and workers, who combine spiritual 
knowledge with practical labor, have heads that are more 
definitely focused and smaller, bringing the brain into 
more compact order and centering it more firmly. 

" In the past and up to the present time, to a great degree, 



A KEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 27 

the human soul has been thoughtful for itself alone. 
After a lapse of time, it learned, from spiritual force being 
brought to bear upon it, quickening it into new life and 
thought, that a greater degree of happiness was to be 
found in ministering to the happiness of others, since the 
happiness of the human soul who was thus ministered 
unto caused a flow of gratitude toward the human soul 
thus ministering, increasing their happiness ten-fold, and 
by slow degrees the human soul has learned to make 
others happy if it would be happy itself. 

" In the past the savage mind cared nothing for the suf- 
ferings of one whom they tortured ; it did not react upon 
them because their spiritual natures were not opened, and 
they were not amenable to spiritual laws. But down 
through the ages, with a calm persistence, the angel bands 
appointed for this work have come at regular intervals 
and breathed upon every human soul that walked the 
earth and wakened them into nobler aspirations, higher 
hopes, purer joys, and to-day, instead of asking ' What 
will make me happiest % ' the more spiritualized human 
soul asks, ' What can T do to best insure the happiness of 
the greatest number of other human souls ? ' Hence the 
desire for reform in any direction, when any form of 
oppression exists. The human soul that thought only of 
itself is now quickened into holier aspiration, the family, 
the state, the nation. When once the mind of man can 
see that his greater happiness and peace will flow from 
blessing others, then will he hasten to do the deeds that 
shall bring about this end." 

This is the lesson of lessons for the human mind to 
learn, the ministry of good, for it is the key-note of 
redemption on entering spirit life, the song of the angels. 

There is still another important lesson to glean from 
the quotations above, germain to our subject, and which 



28 REASON VS. KEVELATION. 

if rightly construed serves to explain a serious point in 
the controversy between Mr. Field, Mr. Gladstone and 
Mr. Ingersoll. The revolting Jehovah of the Hebrews 
was simply the foul creation of their selfish and animal 
natures, the highest conception that these unspiritual peo- 
ple could gather of the Great Oversoul of the universe, a 
personal All-Father-God — and although Mr. Ingersoll had 
Mr. Field and Mr. Gladstone at a fearful disadvantage 
from their endeavoring to explain away a myth of the 
distorted imagination of a semi -barbarous people, the 
Jehovah of the Jews, we submit that in doing so he took 
an unfair advantage of the deep-seated prejudice of modern 
theology which in very many of its features partakes of 
the weaknesses and errors of their own distorted vision, and 
has come down to our age deeply colored with some of 
the most mythical forms of idol worship and fetich cus- 
toms that pertained to the age of idolatry. But like all 
myths, all forms of worship in the past, their peculiar cus- 
toms have ever reflected the substance of a great under- 
lying truth — a great All Father, a personal God who 
supervises the universe of worlds. This sentiment in the 
human race so pronounced, so ever present in the rec- 
ords of every nation or tribe, all the way down the ages 
assuredly reflects the shadow image of a substance as pal- 
pable as our own mortal existence. The diligent student 
reads this unerring record in all the world's annals, 
inscribed on temples and monuments, whether to " The 
Unknown God " of the Egyptians, or far, far back in the 
childhood of conscious existence of man. 

Again we are happy to quote from another deep and 
impressive lesson on the personality of the Divine given 
us spirit voiced. They are the words of wisdom, from 
an ancient spirit, not to be gainsaid : 

" The question is often asked, is there a personal God 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 29 

who supervises the planet ? Many affirming that a grand 
universal principle governs all things, denying the exist- 
ence of a personal Grod. 

"All questions of this kind can only be answered by 
analogy — your learned men and philosophers use their 
philosophy to good purpose as far as material things are 
concerned. I only ask them to use the same philosophy 
in spiritual things. I will not ask them to throw away 
their philosophy, but simply extend it into the realm of 
spiritual matters — you look around this room, you see the 
furniture in it, you see all the material objects within the 
room, what created them? Was it a grand universal 
principle? Did a grand principle ever manufacture a 
chair without using hands? Did a universal principle 
ever weave a web of cloth, build a building, lay out and 
construct a street, or produce any of these things of modern 
convenience or necessity ? Did a universal principle ever 
create or make even a pin, or more, a straw ? Is it not 
necessary, absolutely necessary, that some brain or hand 
shall work together to accomplish all these things ? 

" Is not an individual presence and power necessary to 
accomplish aught in material life ? You do not expect 
that anything shall be accomplished save through the indi- 
vidual work or supervision of some embodied spirit ; now 
all I ask of your philosophers is to apply the same rule to 
spiritual things. If it be not possible to accomplish even 
a simple work in material things without a personal pres- 
ence and power, how much more impossible is it to accom- 
plish aught in spiritual things without the supervision of 
a personal Grod. Use your reason and judgment. Do the 
stars of themselves shine ? Does the sun give out its rays 
spontaneously, with no power to direct ? Or do the trees 
grow, the flowers bloom, and the earth yield all her glory 
in the form of vegetable life, mineral wealth and wonderful 



30 REASON VS. REVELATION". 

phenomenon of themselves ? Do the tides ebb and flow 
of their own thought ? Do the waves break upon the shore 
freely without law ? Are human souls born without any 
supervision of a higher power ? Is this wonderful mech- 
anism, the human body, called into life, carried through 
certain conditions, and again destroyed when its work is 
finished, of itself ? Do all the thoughts and ideas that well 
up in the human soul come from nothing ; does a fountain 
flow without any head ? In short, does anything in any 
direction that lives or moves or has existence, live, act or 
move spontaneously of itself ? If so, then there is no 
personal God; but I repeat again if these simple and mate- 
rial things have not the power to accomplish a work in 
themselves, how shall the universe, how shall anything, be 
accomplished without the supervision of a personal intelli- 
gence behind it ? 

"You would answer: "We see these things, therefore 
we know. Yet, that that has the greatest influence to-day 
in all countries, continents, among all peoples ; that with- 
out which the ocean would be one vast waste of water, 
impassable by human forms ; that which hath more to do 
with commercial wealth and power than aught else at this 
time ; that which is a protection to any human soul in the 
wildest solitude of woods or waste of waters, and which is 
a safe guide under all conditions, whether of shadow or 
sunshine, in any climate, among any peoples, in any direc- 
tion : simply the power which attracts the magnetic needle, is 
invisible to mortal eyes, unseen, unknown, for your scien- 
tists and philosophers have vainly sought to know whence 
comes this power. 

" The fact that this magnetic needle is attracted by some 
invisible power toward the same point invariably, and 
under all conditions, proves that there is somewhat to 
attract the needle thither. 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 31 

" So with the human soul ; no matter whether it be rich 
or poor, high or low, learned or ignorant, good or bad, 
black or white, it invariably, in all countries, spontane- 
ously lifts itself toward a divine personal Power, it knows 
not what or where ; and as surely as this attraction of the 
needle proves that there is somewhat that attracts it, so 
surely the attraction of the human soul toward a divine 
personal God, proves beyond all shadow of doubt the exist- 
ence of that personal God." 

This much conceded, gives mortals the sure promise of 
immortality. 

We quote again from the spirit- voiced utterances of 
Mrs. C. L. V. Kichmond as the refined gold of truth : 

" It was said by Socrates, that man's immortality was 
so much a part of himself that were it taken from him 
there would be nothing left. It is certain thafc in every 
age, among all people, the highest civilization has attested 
that man's intellectual and man's religious nature craves 
an expression beyond the senses. It is also evident that 
all people have had some form of religion ; and however 
objectional may have been their creeds ; however much 
some of the external services may have been revolting to 
modern thought and civilization, the inception of every 
religion is based upon the knowledge that there is an over- 
ruling, all-wise, and all-conscious Intelligence, and upon 
the relationship of the spirit of man to that Divine Intelli- 
gence. There are those in the world of secular thought 
who call themselves materialists, who claim that man's 
belief in immortality is merely a matter of education ; but 
what is education if there were nothing to prompt the 
idea ? If the intellect of man could not conceive of immor- 
tality, how would people have become educated without 
evidence of some kind ? The materialists say : but the 
thought of a God has its origin in the fear of man. We 



32 KEASOtf VS. KEVELATI0ST. 

deny this in toto. The thought of an overruling Intelli- 
gence or Power may have its origin in the sublimity and 
awe of man's nature, but not in his fear. Fear is as foreign 
to religion as truth and love are to falsehood and hatred. 
It is wholly impossible to ascribe the reverence of past 
ages, the monuments of religious thought, the deep religious 
fervor, the evidence of spiritual truth in the mind of man 
to the paltry passion of fear. Sectarianism and the narrow 
limits of creed may bind man by fear ; but as Jesus set 
His disciples free, as it was claimed by John that the truth 
had set them free : so in every age, the noblest men, the 
most exalted spirits, those who have had consciousness 
of the deepest and of a religious kind were the freest from 
fear." 

" We shall not discuss any of the various denomina- 
tional religions of the world, that each have their place 
and they all have their foundation in some portion of the 
truth of the universe is true ; but what we shall discuss is 
that innate perception in man which claims an Infinite 
God as the ruler of the universe, a Divine Intelligence 
that governs and pervades all, and claims an inheritance 
for man that is beyond the senses. Upon what does it 
rest? 

"A priori. If man is governed merely by material laws 
he would never have thought of such a thing. No one 
knows, but it must be positively certain that the bird sing- 
ing in yonder tree to-day has no dream of summer gar- 
dens in paradise where it will sing its song forever ; it is 
certain that the weasel, the squirrel and the wild animals 
around you, hold no thoughts of some country in the skies 
which may be theirs, do not dream of an intelligence sep- 
arate from that which is the instinct of their being as 
stamped upon them at the time of their generation into 
existence ; it is also evident that within no other form of 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 33 

life in the visible universe excepting man is there any 
conception of truth apart from the senses, of knowledge in 
its a priori nature, or of those wonderful nights of imagi- 
nation, speculation, mathematics, and the various scientific 
propositions that are in the world abstract and removed 
from the senses. It is clearly shown that man alone wor- 
ships an invisible, yet to him an all-potent and palpable 
power; whether you accept the God of the Hindoos, 
whether God is veiled in the Brahminical faith of Brahma, 
Vishnu, and Siva ; or whether you go back to ancient 
Egypt and find inscribed upon the temples and tablets 
dedicated to Osiris the name of the unknown God ; 
that name which was never pronounced, so sacrilegious 
would it have been to speak the name of the Infinite Good : 
whether you bend before the shrine of the Christian church 
and worship either in the Eoman Catholic Church or 
among the various denominational forms of the Protestant 
faith ; or go farther back into Jerusalem and worship in 
the temples dedicated to Jehovah, that same name inter- 
polated and translated from the ancient Egyptian un-nam- 
able God ; whether you do this or whether you worship 
to-day without voice or word but with the spirit of truth 
in this temple of nature, it is certain that wherever man 
exists, there is a perception of the other, inner life, a con- 
templation of that which is beyond and above, a perception 
of the invisible yet palpable realm of causation, a causa- 
tion which may find its outward expression in nature, but 
which no science, nor mere formula of material methods 
has ever been able to solve. 

" If then the thought of immortality originated in the 
mind of man whence came it? We contend that the 
universe contains no falsehoods ; that the visible realm of 
the earth, air and sky, fulfill their promises. Whatever is 

promised in the root is fulfilled in the tree ; whatever is 
2* 



34 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

promised in the nest is fulfilled in the flight and song of 
the bird ; whatever is promised in yonder sunbeam is ful- 
filled in the summer air, the awakening of flowers into 
bloom, even sight itself, that with which man perceives 
the objects of the universe when it is vivified by his spirit ; 
even the vision of man is not a fictitious promise : in the 
caves where there is no light the fishes have no eyes, 
showing that nature does not waste her resources, that no 
promise is given that is not to be fulfilled. If there were 
no light in the universe would man have eyes and go 
mockingly about, prowling about in the darkness vainly 
endeavoring to find something to see ? 

" Whatever the visible universe in the great majesty of 
the primal law and primal intelligence has provided for 
must be fulfilled, and this leads us to the threshold of 
human intelligence. 

11 That glimmering leaf out there on which an artist could 
see many different shades, holds promise of a thousand 
pictures, and but for the eyes of man, adjusted and per- 
fectly cultivated to form and color, these trees might wave 
their branches in the air forever and there would be no 
interpreter. 

" Intelligence through man, from some unseen source 
steps into this great and wonderful laboratory of nature and 
interprets the meaning of sound and sights, in tones and 
color, and the spirit of man, capable of this interpretation 
of things that are larger of size and vaster in magnitude, 
must be greater than that which it interprets. 

"It is useless for materialists to say that the human 
mind is developed from matter, when the human mind is 
the only power in the universe that can analyze matter, 
classify it and call it by name and interpret its meaning. 

"It is useless for the materialist to declare that the thought 
of immortality is derived from the dust ; the dust nowhere 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 35 

proclaims anything in and of itself ; it is man's intelligence 
that clothes the dust with this divine majesty ; it is the 
poet that gives to the forest the interpretation of poetry ; it 
is the artist that interprets the color and forms of nature 
to the true meaning of the tone and hue ; it is man's in- 
telligence that imbues the nature around him with the life 
that is his own, until from some great master-stroke from 
within the soul he recognizes through nature the infinite 
intelligence that has fashioned all this. Where in all the 
dust beneath man's feet, in all the cloud pavilions over- 
head, in all the splendor of leaf and tree, and blooming 
flower, could man rind the thought of immortality if it 
were not true ? 

" Down through the ages there is one line of material 
history, and there is another line unwritten, yet palpable 
history of mankind. 

" That whatever is great and true, though the form of 
it perish, the soul of it must survive, and fill the upper 
air with the splendor of its power, and man with this sur- 
passing intelligence, with this capacity of measuring the 
universe by his thought, with the capability of analyzing 
the causes of material things, with this aspiration for im- 
mortal life, were it unfulfilled he would remain the veriest 
mockery of the universe around him." 

But while we quote thus copiously from the spiritual 
utterances of those who have passed into the beyond, they 
are to us simply corollary evidence. For long years we 
have personally enjoyed the inestimable blessings of spirit 
communion, and the supreme fact of immortality has 
passed in our experience from speculation to knowledge 
absolute. 

We know that the spirit of man lives after the death of 
the body, hence our unswerving faith, that is more than 
faith. One familiar voice speaking to us from the spirit 



36 REASON YS. REVELATION. 

side of life (for life in the form and in the spirit are one) 
proclaims the priceless knowledge of immortality, and no 
sophistry or skepticism of those who have never experi- 
enced the thrilling message from spirit to mortal that the 
spirit of man lives, and will continue to live forever, can 
banish a great eternal truth. 

It was proclaimed in myriad forms in the Old Testament 
records, and forms to us the chief value of the records. 
It was reannounced in the four Grospels with all the credi- 
bility of historical fact, and as such deserves acceptance 
from the candid mind. The spirits of Moses and Elias 
conversed with the Saviour in the presence of his disciples, 
and Paul, the bitter persecutor of Christians, was arrested 
and convicted while on his way to Damascus by the 
clairaudient voice of the gentle Saviour, himself a return- 
ing spirit. 

We assert again and again, that the Testament records, 
Old and New, are the collated spiritual experiences of the 
representative Hebrew race, who were the most progressed 
people spiritually then manifesting the human life, that 
they are teeming with the phenomena of the spirit phi- 
losophy as understood to-day, in spirit intercourse, in acts 
of healing, clairaudience, clairvoyance, obsession and ma- 
terialization, and the scientists and men of intellect as 
against spirituality, who decry and defame this established 
verity, are in the humiliating and indefensible condition 
of the Indian cnief, who on being shown a telegram and 
informed that it was a message for him over the wires 
from the Great Father two thousand miles away, looked 
in blank disdain at the operator and said, " No fool Indian," 
or the Western Senator at Washington who, when Mr. 
Morse made his first experiment with the telegraph to 
Baltimore, denounced him as a swindler and opposed the 
appropriation for his experiment. 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 37 

It is plain that the Hebrew race and all the tribes who 
were wandering over Western Asia at that time, were 
semi-barbarous, living a purely physical life and plunder- 
ing each other, according to the usages of savage life. 
They were led like our American Indians by their proph- 
ets or medicine men, who possessed great power over 
them because they believed that these seers communed 
direct with the spirit world, and therefore gave them their 
highest confidence. 

This was especially true of the Hebrews, who even 
allowed Samuel to appoint them a king in the person of 
Saul, because they implicitly believed that Samuel ex- 
pressed the will of God. 

The Hebrews, and in fact all contemporary tribes of that 
age, claimed to commune direct with the spirit world, and 
their sacrifices and fetich customs partook largely of spirit 
intercourse in its gross and physical forms of manifesta- 
tion 

It is wise and healthful that such a controversy as the 
one in question should be had, because it will evoke 
thought upon the important question of who is this mon- 
strous Jehovah of the Jews, and what relation he bears to 
the loving All Father which His Sou Jesus Christ came 
to tell us of. The hideous deformity of this Jehovah of 
the Jews is painted in revolting colors by Mr. Ingersoll, 
but with our explanation he is beating a stuffed lion. 

He next cites to Mr. Field the sacrifice of Jephtha's 
daughter and the Hindoo mother casting her child into 
the Ganges. 

It would be only candid for Mr. Field to have admitted 
the parallel of these idolatrous customs, because the gov- 
erning motive was the same, the one growing out of the 
fetich custom of sacrifice, and the Hindoo mother's sacrifice 
with the hope to have her child restored to her through 



38 KEASOtf VS. KEVELATIOtf. 

the almost universal belief in metempsychosis, the theory 
that her child would return and share the tenement of 
some mortal, without the dread of poverty and suffering, 
and be near her. 

There are so many stuffed lions in Mr. Ingersoll's lines 
of argument that when eliminated from the controversy 
there is little left, as himself admits this Jehovah to be a 
myth. 

Mr. Ingersoll, after thoroughly demolishing this myth 
of a Jehovah, refers to Christ. 

He says, " If we cannot account for Christ without a 
miracle, how can we account for Shakspeare ? " 

But we affirm that we can account for Christ without a 
miracle, the dogmas of theology and the dogmas of science 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Yery much of the cru- 
dities, inconsistencies and vagaries that have been formu- 
lated by theology in the name of religion are " simply the 
commandments of men," and have been of incalculable 
evil to the wayfarer in search of truth. 

The birth of the Saviour into the material form can be 
accounted for under natural law, for Omnipotence even 
may not contravene His own laws. Hence let us look for 
the seeming miracle and account for it through natural 
law. 

We enter this theme with the " deep reverential calm " 
which Mr. Gladstone spoke of, because to us the gentle 
Saviour represents the great infinite heart of being to 
which all humanity are allied, not as distorted theology 
impiously claims, as the incarnation of the infinite heart 
in a human form, but as the very Son of the All Father, 
who came to the children of earth, lived the natural life 
of man, under all the conditions of life, and passed again 
into the realm of spirit. His presence here marked the 
opening of a great spiritual epoch on the planet, and His 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. ItfGERSOLL. 39 

influence in the spiritualization of the planet has been 
gaining momentum ever since His light went out on Cal- 
vary. While the many reputed Saviours of the world 
have passed into oblivion the name of Jesus Christ has 
become the guiding star, " The thought to which all other 
thoughts refer," the beacon light of humanity. 

As a human soul cannot be united to a divine parent- 
age sufficiently to receive perceptible good, unless it have 
a belief in that divine parentage, the mission of the 
Saviour to earth's children made it possible to thus con- 
nect humanity with the Infinite. This may fitly be termed 
11 the scheme of salvation." 

The misapprehensions of theology need explanation 
here concerning the being and status of Him whom we 
call the Saviour. 

We are taught from the spirit side of life, as well as 
from the Bible records, that this great, grand Spirit came 
to earth's children to quicken their spiritual perception 
into enduring love and justice. At His advent the planet 
was veiled in spiritual darkness. The age of simple 
intellect was past meridian, and left its trail of effects to 
humanity in a refined selfishness that cared only for self, 
and used the common people as slaves and beasts of 
burden. 

Again, we can best give expression to this central 
thought, given us through inspired lips by an ancient 
spirit. 

" I have counted the centuries as they rolled out of the 
hand of time into the ocean of eternity like pebbles drop- 
ping into the sea. I have known all nations of the earth, 
seen their rise and their fall, have noted the generations 
of men, witnessed their birth and death ; I have traveled 
up and down the earth until there is no spot unknown to 
me, no nation, no people that are unfamiliar to my weary 



40 KEASOtf VS. KEVELATIOK. 

eyes ; no custom, condition or habit of the human soul are 
to me new or strange. I gazed into the heavens and read 
their starry pages like the leaves of an open book; I 
studied the aspects of the sun, moon and planets, learning 
many of the mysteries of their being, and saw wondrous 
changes take place in them all. 

" Age after age I have watched the changes in the earth, 
and seen it slowly grow fairer and more beautiful, its 
revolutions becoming swifter and shorter, until the days 
are but moments compared with the past. I have seen 
all things in the physical heavens and earth, and change 
is written on them all ; that change is universal new birth. 

" Law, eternal, unchangeable, divine law, lies back of, 
underneath, surrounding, pervading, all spirit, all matter 
— law, that day by day compels and wins all things into 
newness of life and harmony of action. 

" Many of the nations of the earth have faded out of 
the memory and even the traditions of man. Like drops 
of dew the coming light absorbed them, and they were 
gone, but not lost. There was yet no divine love in the 
earth to crystallize human souls into enduring liberty and 
life. 

" They grew into perfection of intellectual life, but lack- 
ing spiritual knowledge they perished. I have seen this 
darkness also passing away from human souls. Shiloh 
brought spiritual light that shall light every soul that 
lives or ever lived. Say not that He taught as other great 
teachers taught before, and that most of His sayings may 
be found recorded before His advent. ' By their fruits 
shall ye know them,' He said, and if the same truth was 
taught before, where are its fruits ? The teachings of all 
others were local ; mighty walls surrounded the cities of 
these teachers, and their ports were closed to all foreign 
nations. Nations repeated the bigotry, superstition and 



A KEPLY TO KOBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 41 

selfisliness of the nations that had perished before them, 
but He taught the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood 
of man. He alone taught immortality. Wherever His 
teachings have been planted, even though it might be 
false hands that planted them, there and there alone a 
living light is shining that can never be extinguished. 

" Before this undying light, all bigotry, intolerance, self- 
ishness, slavery and poverty are slowly fading away and 
will soon be known no more forever. 

" Before Him, who is the light and the way, the walls 
that for ages have withstood the ravages of time and the 
assaults of man crumble into dust, and the strange people 
of these walled cities are invited to all the nations of the 
earth and become their brethren. The steady shining of 
His light guided the ships of other nations safely into 
ports where certain death and destruction awaited all who 
attempted to enter unheralded by Him. 

" I have seen that all teachers were but prophets who 
shadowed His substance. In the light of His divine love 
all selfishness shall melt away. The soul lighted by Him 
is perfected, the nations taught of Him cannot perish. He 
will soon weld the nations of the earth together in one 
family ; then, when the great heart of humanity throbs 
in unison with His life, war, pestilence, famine, sorrow 
and poverty, will cease forever. 

"I await this hour, knowing that when He giveth peace 
to the nations, I too shall find rest." 

But we must not be led too far away from our objective 
point. Jesus Christ, the very Son of the All Father, came 
as the Kazarene only to experience a human life, to 
quicken the sluggish spirit of man unto enduring life, and 

" The seed there sown 
O'er all the world hath blown, 
And blossoms in many a weary heart." 



42 REASON VS. REVELATION". 

He took up the mortal life for this especial purpose, for 
He was diviue, and all the way down the ages has this 
patient, loving Spirit watched the gestating and chrysalis 
forms of life on this planet which was given Him by His 
and our Heavenly Father for an inheritance, from the 
hour the planet was cast into space among the universe of 
worlds. He has inspired every prophet that was vulner- 
able to His beneficent power to give the highest and 
truest expression of His divine will, and truly every 
such spiritual messenger " has shadowed his substance." 
He is ministering to-day through every human spirit 
that has grown so far into the light as to be enabled 
to voice His beneficent command to "love one another." 
Yes ; this great, towering Spirit whom theology has 
belittled to the selfish Saviour of the infinitesimal few, 
is the Saviour of the race in its broadest and deepest 
significance. He told the Jewish teachers who taunted 
Him of His age, in comparison to their Father Abra- 
ham, " Before Abraham was I am" and before the morn- 
ing stars sang together, and darkness was yet on the face 
of the deep, Jesus Christ was, one with His and our All 
Father, God. 

From the fact that even Deity never contravenes His 
, own laws to perform a miracle, we believe all the reputed 
miracles occurred under natural law, and we are prepared 
to prove that every miracle of Christ and His disciples 
transpired under natural laws known and practiced to-day 
in degree, as they were chronicled in the New Testament 
records. 

Take, for instance, the acts of healing in all ages, those 
that are to our personal knowledge transpiring in our 
midst, which Mr. Ingersoll denies when he cites the 
reputed acts of healing by Paul, and says he reads the 
record with a smile. 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 43 

Here we take personal issue with him because we are 
quite familiar, and for many years, with acts of healing by 
the laying on of hands. We have witnessed the cure 
of a withered arm that had baffled the skill of medical 
science for six months, restored to its normal condition in 
as many minutes, and the person healed will give his evi- 
dence of the fact. The late Dr. Newton restored thou- 
sands to health by the laying on of hands, and to my 
knowledge his basement was filled with crutches of those 
whom his ministrations had made whole. We personally 
know a lady who has practiced her gift for thirty years and 
blessed thousands in her ministrations. But if Mr. Inger- 
soll would consult the facts of recorded history for the 
past and present century, he will find them teeming with 
acts of healing by the laying on of hands. We refer him 
to the cures of Kegina Del Cin in the German and Aus- 
trian States about the year 1873, where cart loads of 
crutches had to be removed from her humble dwelling 
to make room for more patients who came to be healed. 
But by far the greatest number of sick persons were 
healed by the Cure D'Ars, the Catholic priest, the founder 
of a noble charity at the small town of D'Ars, near Lyons, 
France. No Scripture records begin to at all compare with 
his acts of healing. The Abbe Monnin who writes his 
biography in two bulky volumes, and the author William 
Howitt says he was born at Lyons in 1786, and performed 
acts of healing early in life and in ever increasing numbers 
until his death in 1859. He was always very poor and 
used every dollar given him to bless humanity. His 
fame as a healer by spirit power became world wide, and 
his biographers declare that twenty thousand persons came 
annually from all parts of Europe, and in less than six years 
the number of sick persons who were healed by his min- 
istrations averaged eighty thousand per annum. "His 



44 SEASON VS. KEVELATION. 

church stood open day and night, and the immense 
crowds surrounding it were obliged to wait for hours 
and even days, to reach the good healer." 

" The Cure only allowed himself four hours sleep, from 
11 to 3 A. M., when he came to the church to find it 
blocked with patients." 

We could go on ad libitum with these recitals, and so 
well authenticated that they cannot be gainsaid. Hence 
we say to Mr. Ingersoll, be careful of your statements in 
this regard, lest you should be written down in your own 
language to Mr. Gladstone as finding refuge "like the 
ostrich of theology " under the superstitions of dogmatic 
Reason regarding all things spiritual. 

Yery like this ostrich of theology is the position of Mr. 
Ingersoll in regard to the well attested cases of healing 
now transpiring at the Church of Lourdes in France, as 
fully authenticated as is any current history of events, 
and to ignore all these in his " smile of credulity " is to 
put himself in line with the bigotry of creeds, though at 
the other end of the pole, and shutting his eyes and ears to 
all the facts of current history and denying everything that 
is transpiring in our midst, is like placing himself full in 
the sunshine and with bandaged eyes proclaiming oracu- 
larly the puerile inspirations of human reason. 

We quote a few of the events which are at present 
transpiring at Lourdes. They are culled from the daily 
records of the Paris press, and may be found chronicled in 
the New York Sun of Sept. 16, 1888, by an intelligent 
correspondent. 

We quote from the correspondence the following inter- 
esting items : 

" In the city itself, to quote the words of an eye witness, 
the College of St. Joseph, the Convent of the Yisitation, 
the great establishment of the Holy Cross, the houses of 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 45 

the Brothers of St. G-abriel and the Hospital Sisters, the 
Carmelite Monastery, that of La Providence, together 
with the mansions of the Misses Lestang and Boffinet, 
threw open their doors to receive our nine hundred sick. 

" The halls in these houses were transformed into chapels. 
Priests, religious communities, and the Sodalities, all vie 
with each other in devoting themselves to the pilgrims. 

" So all along the various lines of railroad converging 
toward Lourdes, the resident gentry and clergy laid aside 
every occupation during the last three weeks in order to 
help forward this great national manifestation of living 
faith in Him who was born of the Virgin Mary. 

"And what was happening at Lourdes itself? 

" The correspondent of T Univers writes from the spot, on 
August 20 : 'At this very moment two groups of Southern 
pilgrims are coming in. In the grotto and at the church 
the voice of the multitude is heard singing the Parce 
Domine, parce populo tuo ("Spare, Lord, spare thy 
people "). This voice of supplication will resound there 
unceasingly from this hour forward. The great national 
group of pilgrims is now at Poitiers. Henceforth we shall 
hear the mighty cry of public prayer of the mass of sick 
and infirm. Lourdes draws to itself the eyes of all Chris- 
tendom. The brancardiers are at their post, the hospitals 
are all open and waiting. Charity everywhere opens her 
heart and her arms. The Mother of the Incarnate God 
will show at the grotto her tender motherly love for all 
these sufferers. Miracles and mercy are about to come 
down on our land.' 

" I am only quoting. And now, omitting all the heart- 
stirring descriptions of the scenes which took place at 
Lourdes itself, let me ask your readers to come back with 
me to Paris, where the ten thousand pilgrims have just 
arrived in unspeakable enthusiasm and exultation. 



46 EEASON VS. KEVELATION. 

" ' Emotion was at its highest pitch yesterday in Paris, 
says La Croix of the 28th of August, ' when the pilgrims 
from Lourdes arrived at the station, for more cures had 
been effected than had been telegraphed from the grotto. 
Several of the most wonderful of these were not even for- 
mally examined into and certified by the twenty physicians 
forming the commission of inquiry at Lourdes ; for it 
requires no small courage to face all the questioning of 
these conscientious men, whose duty it is to raise all kinds 
of doubts and objections. " What do I care," said one 
of those who had been miraculously restored to health. 
" What care I whether you believe or not in the reality of 
my cure? I know that I am cured, and that is enough 
for me." ' 

"These authenticated accounts are necessarv; and we 
detail some of them. 

" 'Here comes Miss P . To see her stepping firmly 

forward, no one could imagine that she had been com- 
pletely paralyzed during the last twelve years. During the 
procession of the blessed sacrament (from the church to 
the grotto) she started up and followed it, and then went 
down to the grotto to thank Grod for her cure. She walked 
all the way with a firm step, and she walks so still.' 

" This is one of the many cases which are examined 
thoroughly in Paris by the ecclesiastical authorities and 
the foremost physicians." 

It is a favorite weapon for the opponents of Christianity 
to use, that the principal sayings of Christ were taught 
long before His advent as the Nazarene, but from our view 
it is simply cumulative evidence, because this same grand 
Spirit has watched over and inspired every Christly spirit 
according to their respectivity to His teachings, and is 
inspiring every Christly spirit to-day who is striving to 
make the world better, truer or happier. They are all 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 47 

manifestations of the One Divine Spirit which is absorbing 
itself into humanity just so fast as the growth of human 
souls will enable it to do so, and this is the spirit of Christ. 

It is one of the unfortunate positions of theology that 
their votaries instead of following the spiritual light that 
is coming to humanity through so many channels, will 
continue to hug their idols of dogmatic theology and vainly 
attempt to interpret the Scripture by their false lights. It 
is this fallacy which repels, and is driving so many liberal 
and candid minds outside her fold, the most mischievous 
of which is the fallacious doctrine of rewards and punish- 
ments which is pagan, and is chronicled in the Persian 
Bible that plainly taught this idolatrous conception of 
Deity. 

Before closing our criticism we would cite the reader to 
the testimony of the reputed infidel and skeptic Kousseau. 
In making a comparison of the criticisms of Mr. Ingersoll 
and the testimony of this liberal author, we regret that 
Mr. Ingersoll will suffer in the contrast. 

Mr. Ingersoll in our view did not treat so profound a 
subject with either the deference or the reverence it de- 
served, nor with the fairness that should have character- 
ized so important a discussion, and where from the nature 
of the ground chosen by himself in selecting what he 
termed " a myth " (the Jehovah of the Jews), and attempt- 
ing to confound this myth with the teachings of pure 
religion he has grievously misled the common reader by 
making this myth represent the Great Oversoul of the 
universe. "We therefore append the testimony of this 
strong infidel writer in agreeable contrast, and infidel 
though he was called in derision, his frank and manly 
utterances denoted that he was fast nearing " the Kingdom 
of Heaven." 

Eousseau, in a confidential epistle to the skeptical Hume 



48 EEASOK" VS. EEVELATIOK. 

thus epitomizes the Gospels and pays his tribute to the 
Nazarene. " I will confess to yon that the majority of the 
Scriptures strike me with admiration, as the purity of the 
Gospels hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works 
of our philosophers with all their pomp and diction ; how 
mean, how contemptible are they compared to the Scrip- 
tures. Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and 
sublime, should be merely the work of man ? Is it pos- 
sible that the sacred personage whose history it contains 
should be Himself a mere man? Do we find that He 
assumed the tone of an enthusiastic or ambitious secre- 
tary ? what sweetness, what purity in His manner ; what 
an affecting gracefulness in His delivery ; what sublimity 
in His maxims ; what profound wisdom in His discourses ; 
what presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in His 
replies. How great command over His passions. Where 
is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and 
so die, without weakness and without ostentation ? When 
Plato describes his imaginary good men laden with all the 
punishments of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of 
virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ. 
The resemblance was so striking that all the Fathers per- 
ceived it. What prepossession ; what blindness, it must 
be to compare the son of Sophronicus to the Son of Mary. 
What an infinite disproportion there is between them. 
Socrates dying without pain or ignominy easily supported 
his character to the last, and if his death, however easy, 
had not crowned his life, it might have been disputed 
whether Socrates with all his wisdom was anything more 
than a mere sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory 
of morals. Others, however, had before put them in prac- 
tice. He had only to say therefore what they had done 
and reduce their example to precepts. Aristides had been 
just, before Socrates defined justice. Leonidas had given 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. ItfGERSOLL. 49 

up his life to his country before Socrates declared patriot- 
ism to be a duty. The Spartans were a sober people be- 
fore Socrates recommended sobriety ; before he had even 
defended virtue Greece abounded in virtuous men. But 
where could Jesus learn among His cotemporaries that 
pure and sublime morality of which He only hath given 
us precept and example ? The greatest wisdom was made 
known amid the most bigoted fanaticism, and the sim- 
plicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest 
people on earth. The death of Socrates peacefully phil- 
osophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable 
that could be wished for ; that of Jesus expiring in the 
midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted and accused by 
a whole nation, is the most horrible that can be feared. 
Socrates in receiving the cup of poison blessed indeed the 
weeping executioner who administered it, but Jesus, in the 
midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for His merciless 
tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were 
those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a 
God. ' 

" Shall we suppose the evangelical history a mere 
fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the work of 
fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates which 
nobody presumes to doubt is not so well attested as that of 
Jesus Christ. Such a supposition in fact only shifts the 
difficulty without obviating it. It is more incomprehen- 
sible that a number of persons should agree to write such 
a history than that one should furnish the subject of it. 
The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction and 
strangers to the morality contained in the Grospels ; the 
marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable that 
the inventor would be a more astonishing character than 
the hero." 

The man who could write thus boldly in a very skep- 



50 REASON VS. EEVELATION. 

tical age is fitly characterized by the Master when He tells 
the scribes " that the publicans and harlots go into the 
Kingdom of Heaven before you." 

Mr. Ingersoll trades largely upon human reason as a 
factor to decide what truth is. This human reason is a 
very weak and fallible guide, and very often misleads. 
Inspiration often passes naked reason in reaching the truth. 
Inspiration and revelation are the knowledge that transcends 
reason, yet which the spirit of man bears witness of as being 
true. When one of our giants of intellect, ¥m. H. Seward, 
reasoned with the people in the Senate of the nation and 
told them at the opening of the Eebellion that it would 
not last six months, a poor colored woman sitting on the 
steps of the Capitol chamber went out among her people 
and prophesied a long war and their deliverance, it was 
revelation against reason. And when the fatal gun was 
fired on Fort Sumter, a poor negro on the dock as he 
watched the flash, rushed into the city and prophesied 
freedom for his race. 

The achievements of naked science unaided by inspira- 
tion are very meager. In fact science has been compelled 
to shift base very often by the inspirations of Gralileo, 
Copernicus, and Kepler. 

The god of intellect, frail human reason, would have no 
status, no function, were she not breathed upon by some 
power greater than herself, higher, back of, and beyond 
the domain of reason ; therefore reason is an effect, not a 
cause. And this cause is that all wise deific power which 
is revealing all things unto man just so fast as he can 
receive, comprehend and utilize their divine mysteries. 
Show us a genius either in literature, science, art, or in- 
vention, and we will show you a mediumistic soul breathed 
upon direct from the fountains of all knowledge upon the 
spirit side of life. 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 51 

Instance Shakspeare. There is no evidence that he re- 
ceived tuition at the universities, which were very few, and 
only for the wealthy class. At eighteen years of age, then 
married, we find him working for his father, a butcher, 
and for the four years thereafter, when a strolling band of 
players enticed him from his home to Stratford-on-Avon. 
This was in 1593, and from this time he commenced to 
write and give the world the matchless plays, the original 
thought, the classic language, the poetic imagery, the deep 
and subtle philosophies which stamped him the master 
mind of the ages. His writings too evidenced such rare 
talent and so versatile in the field of science, art, law, 
poetry and the classics that any candid mind must ac- 
knowledge that Will Shakspeare, laboring under all these 
disabilities, with no avenues through which to gain even 
a rudimentary education, could not have mastered these 
scholarly and professional attainments except through 
some unexplainable cause outside himself. 

But himself best expresses the situation when he affirms 
(spirit voiced) in our hearing 

" To speak or not to speak, that is the question 
That oft hath vexed, my spirit since that sad day 
When I did write ' No traveler hath returned 
From that dread bourne with messages for man.' 
Friends, strangers, fellow travelers, lend me your ears, 
And let your judgment swiftly run to condemnation 
For that base act ; for even while I wrote the words, 
The pomps and pageantry of priest and prelate, 
Prince and page, did pass before my vision, 
The very words they spake did fill my ears, 
And straightway coursing through my blood 
Did find expression by my pen. 
And women fair in glorious appareling 
Oft floated round about me, 
Till I had caught their meaning and their mien, 
And thus transfixed them where the world could read. 



52 EEASOK YS. EEVELATIOif. 

I did write all the songs and plays that bore my name 

And many more, but never did I coin them 

From out my brain, nor find them (as hath been said) 

In some old book that afterward was lost. 

The words I wrote were spoken in my ear 

By beings who had dwelt here on earth 

Where you now dwell, and oft they filled my brain 

With strange forgetfulness, and I did write and write 

And knew not what I wrote till it was done. 

I stood within the veil while in the form. 

I wrote what I did hear and see of them 

Who long ago had slept, as men do say, 

But failed to tell the thing. 

Thus by my silence did I stab 

My truest friends with blows far more unkindly 

Than the fell stroke Brutus gave to Csesar. " 

It is because in the groundwork of their defense of what 
the j term pure religion, Mr. Field and Mr. Gladstone 
undertook the impossible task of substituting for the teach- 
ings of Jesus Christ pure and simple, "the commandments 
of men," as expressed in the church creeds, with the mis- 
conceptions which these creeds have implanted in the 
orthodox mind, that they are helpless for argument in the 
present debate. The several creeds and declarations of 
faith upon which they found their theology and term it 
Holy Writ, instead of being logical deductions from the 
teachings of the ISTazarene, are to the unbiased mind 
directly the opposite. Hence the false position of those 
like Mr. Field and Mr. Gladstone who vainly attempt to 
maintain or defend what they term " the Word of God." 
based upon theologies which are in themselves so vulner- 
able that they cannot for a moment stand against the keen 
and unanswerable arguments of a purely intellectual mind 
like Mr. Ingersoll, who endeavors to square all things 
spiritual by the gauge of fallible reason, and it is because 
we would enter a protest against such unwise treatment of 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. LNGERSOLL. 53 

this all-important issue between spirituality and dogmatic 
intellect, between reason and revelation, that we undertake 
to defend the spiritual philosophy upon tenable grounds 
dissociated from the errors of theology and from which 
reason in her selfhood and vanity cannot assail true reli- 
gion, which is the teachings of Jesus Christ. 

The Apostle James defines pure religion in unmistak- 
able language. 

" Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father 
is this : to visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic- 
tion and to keep himself unspotted from the world." 

The phrase " the kingdom of heaven " will bear quite 
another interpretation than that given it by theology. The 
kingdom of heaven as used by Christ denoted the per- 
fected, the spiritualized state of a human soul. This is 
evidenced from the reply of Jesus to a scribe with 
whom He had been conversing, as related by Mark, chap- 
ter 12. There seemed something of mystery about this 
conversation. Possibly those who heard could not under- 
stand fully the Saviour's meaning, because verse 34 
relates : 

" And no man after that durst ask Him any questions." 

Jesus had been teaching the people in one of His con- 
fidential lessons, and presumably a band of His own dis- 
ciples were present. It seemed a favorite way to teach. 
these unlearned children by parables, or, more properly, 
object lessons, for it was His custom to teach either by 
such object lessons or on the other hand entirely literal. 
When He was literal He was very so, and His messages 
were sharp and clean-cut as if to stand for all time. The 
conversation turned on the resurrection of the dead, or 
rather on the future life, when an interested listener, a 
learned scribe, ventured to ask Jesus a question as was 
the custom. 



54 REASON YS. REVELATION. 

" And one of the scribes came, and having heard them 
reasoning together, and perceiving that He had answered 
them well, asked Him, Which is the first commandment 
of all? 

"And Jesus answered him, The first of all the command- 
ments is, Hear, O, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. 

"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and 
with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. 

" And the second is like, namely this, thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other command- 
ment greater than these. 

" And the scribe said unto Him, Well, Master, Thou 
hast said the truth, for there is one God, and none other 
but He. 

" And to love Him with all the heart and with all the 
understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the 
strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than 
all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices. 

"And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, He said 
unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven," 
i. e., not far from the kingdom of justice and righteousness 
which He came to establish. 

Again we quote from the inspired language of Mrs. 
Eichmond to center this important tenet in the mind of 
the reader because theology has so far misinterpreted " the 
kingdom of heaven " as to entirely destroy its meaning, 
and we have still another purpose in the quotation, that 
of calling special attention to the fallacy of atonement as 
rendered by the church. 

" What did Jesus say when asked about the kingdom 
of heaven ? He said ' the kingdom of heaven is within 
you.' As though this were not sufficient ; the whole 
scheme of theology is based upon attaining a literal king- 



A KEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 55' 

dom through tlie sacrifices of this innocent life. The 
paradise of Mahomet with the houris that are forever min- 
istering to the favored in heaven ; that paradise that 
excludes one half of humanity — women — from the enjoy- 
ment of immortality, is no more material than the usually 
accepted heaven of Christendom ; that literal place, that 
literal city, that literal kingdom which men have expected 
to attain through the vicarious atonement. The great sac- 
rificial rite is in these very words of Jesus blotted out, 
from the interpretation of heaven that He declared : 'In 
my Father's house are many mansions.' My Father's 
house : that means the God to whom He prayed and 
to whom He taught His disciples to pray as 'Our 
Father ; ' He meant the spirit of love, and of wisdom, and 
of omnipotence pervading the material and spiritual uni- 
verse ; He meant that divine Light, under whose guid- 
ance and wisdom and within whose power He received 
the ministration of spiritual gifts ; to whom He turned as 
to one filled with loving kindness for succor in the great 
hour of mortal agony. He meant that spirit of love to 
whom all human beings must involuntarily turn in the 
hour of trouble ; He meant in this expression of ' my 
Father's house ' to convey a promise that His disciples 
would remember when He was gone ; that there were 
places or conditions adapted to them, even though He 
was absent from their sight ; for remember : He was 
endeavoring to teach those who had been educated in the 
material forms of the Hebraic Church the idea of a sepa- 
rate spiritual existence. How He had tried to teach this 
you can judge by the various parables, the various instruc- 
tions that He had given one after another to illustrate the 
moral force of this new light, this new kingdom which 
had come with His spiritual ministration." 

If the numerous readers in this interesting controversy 



56 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

between the leaders of thought in this direction, would 
reflect upon the peculiar relation that the Hebrew race 
held in the Old Testament records when Jesus com- 
menced to preach, and how thej were led by their seers, 
with the fact that only their scholars and learned Eabbis 
had ever entertained a knowledge or belief in an immortal 
existence, they would see what difficulties the Master 
labored under in teaching the people or even His chosen 
disciples of this spiritual kingdom, of the home of 
many mansions. Through another of the inspired dis- 
courses of Mrs. Eichmond, we give the remarkable 
lesson. 

" We must first consider the time in which the sentence 
was uttered that forms the subject of our discourse. The 
Jews had fallen from their inspiration, from the spiritual 
knowledge of their prophets and seers, and in the material 
temples were worshiping forms and ceremonies, and in 
their worship were almost idolatrous, forgetting the inspi- 
ration of the past. Instead of a loving father, the Jews 
had ascribed to God qualities of wrath and revenge, and 
were worshiping at the shrine of a Deity who loved to 
engage in battle, who brought war and desolation upon 
His people and who visited upon them the infliction of 
revenge for their misdeeds. The Jews also failed to teach 
the quality of immortality, whatever was included in 
their former religion had been lost; they were building 
up a material power, a citadel of material strength ; the 
G-od whom they worshiped was a God of materiality. 
They also expected a literal king ; their Messiah was to 
be one who would vanquish their enemies, who would gain 
victory in battle and lead them unto the conquest of the 
earth. 

" Jesus came in the midst of this idolatrous worship of 
creed and ceremony, and declared the new interpretation 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 57 

of truth to be spiritual instead of material. He declared 
the triumph of the spiritual nature of man instead of his 
physical nature ; He declared the moral forces of the uni- 
verse instead of the material battles ; and He set the exam- 
ple of lowly deeds, of kindly words, of loving ministra- 
tions, of spiritual gifts, of healing and assuagement of 
human pain, for the purpose of illustrating His interpre- 
tation of truth. After ages of the worship of a king, a 
god of might and wrath, Jesus declared the name of 
' Our Father ; ' uttered the thought of the love instead 
of the wrath of God, and turned the thought of the unde- 
veloped Jews in the direction of their spiritual natures ; 
He spoke to them as a friend of His Father and of the 
spiritual life. That they did not understand Him is evi- 
dent ; they even questioned among themselves and said 
to Him : ' Show us your Father ; who is this Father ? ' 
and when He told them the spiritual kingdom was not of 
the earth, they were sorely puzzled and perplexed. We 
doubt if any excepting three of even the immediate disci- 
ples of Jesus ever knew what He meant by the spiritual 
kingdom. "We doubt if any excepting these chosen three, 
who upon the Mount of Transfiguration saw the evidence 
of spirit life, ever appreciated the nature of the kingdom 
which Christ came to declare, that spiritual kingdom, 
which of course they could not see with their eyes, nor 
perceive with any of their senses." 

Mr. Ingersoll, by taking the Jehovah of the Jews as 
the great central figure, is enabled to entirely demolish 
this man made God of a material and animal people who 
in their infantile conception of this deific power was 
struggling for expression among a semi-barbarous people ; 
hence was fashioned in the minds of their prophets and 
oracles, with attributes reflected from their own concep. 
tions of Deity, being only 
3* 



58 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

' ' The dread creation of a brain 
Whose own fond resting-place 
Was thine ideal breast." 

This course of reasoning by Mr. Ingersoll, though unan- 
swerable by argument from his premises, must appear to 
the candid mind anything but a true and fair presenta- 
tion of the subject, because the man made Jehovah of the 
Jews does not in any degree represent the great, infinite 
Heart of Being which we term God. Hence the unfair- 
ness of the argument. 

We have said that Christ was either very literal or 
spoke in parables or object lessons, in His confidential 
talks with the disciples, or even with the common people. 
There was a reason for this that does not appear. It must 
be remembered that the Hebrew race were yet in the 
infancy of spiritual thought, and it had hardly dawned 
upon their minds, the fact of a future life, or what that 
life might be. It was to guardedly present this fact, that 
Jesus gave them the beautiful lesson, " In my Father's 
house are many mansions." It is because theology has so 
cruelly misled its followers in this direction that has led 
to such distorted views of a man made heaven and a man 
made hell. Slowly has theology from within her own 
fold been compelled to relinquish her place of eternal 
torments, the new Bible version having relegated it to 
the land of myths, but their mystical heaven for the infin- 
itesimal few stands as the exclusive property of the 
redeemed. And while we would approach this time-hon- 
ored myth of theology with " reverential calm," we feel it 
a duty with the light we have received from the spirit 
side of life, to give that we have received with grateful 
heart, because while it may comfort and console many 
weary souls who are seeking the light, the morality which 
the new thought of spirit life conveys, will serve to guide 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. I^GERSOLL. 59 

them into the paths of right which theology may not 
invoke. 

The spiritual philosophy teaches that we make our 
own heaven or hell, by the lives we live ; that purgatory, 
in a sense, meets every human soul who enters its confines 
weighed down with evil, injustice, uncharity, malice, envy 
or hatred, and all these warring conditions of a human soul 
must be outlived upon the spirit side of life before it can 
attain peace, happiness or progress. Therefore every 
human soul, each for itself, " must give an account of the 
deeds done in the body." There is no vicarious atone- 
ment. There is no shifting the responsibility. How 
necessary therefore, is it for every human soul each for 
himself to weave the wedding garment by a life of kindly 
and loving ministrations, by just dealing and by loving 
his neighbor instead of oppressing him. To sum up, by 
practicing all the Christly beatitudes which were laid 
down in the chart of the great teacher for the guidance of 
mortals. Therefore the " many mansions " which are an 
enigma to theology, with its mystical streets of gold, and 
its material New Jerusalem, become with this new light a 
possible and natural resting place for the human soul dur- 
ing its stages of progress in the spiritual kingdom ; and as 
the many mansions represent the various spheres in spirit 
life to which the spirit unerringly gravitates, to the home 
fashioned for itself " by the deeds done in the body," we 
have a tangible thought concerning the dwelling places of 
our departed friends. 

Again we quote from the spirit voiced words of wisdom 
which flow so freely from the loving ministrations of Mrs. 
Eichmond to center the thought in the mind of the 
reader of the real meaning of the many mansions to 
which Jesus alluded. 

" This sentence carved out of the teachings of Christ is 



60 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

like a clear declaration of spirit against matter, of immor- 
tality against unbelief, of the worship of that which is 
divine, and the promise of that which is spiritual instead 
of a material inheritance. You will remember the circum- 
stances under which this was spoken : Christ had declared 
to them that He was about to leave them, He saw with the 
vision of the spirit that He was to be betrayed unto His 
enemies and put to death in the midst of His teachings. 
He doubly felt; with that affection which He had as a 
man for those who had been His companions and follow- 
ers and with the truth of that divine inspiration, tending 
to teach them of that which was beyond. In this, there- 
fore, when He breathes the words of comfort that are 
ascribed to Him, He adds this sublime promise, which in 
and of itself is sufficient evidence of immortality, of the 
various degrees of spirit life if it were properly inter- 
preted : ' In my Father's house there are many mansions ; 
if it were not so, I would have told you : I go to prepare 
a place for you.' Nothing could be more distinct spiritu- 
ally ; nothing could be more unequivocal with regard to 
the future state. And this should have been taken in- 
stead of the material interpretation of heaven, instead of 
alabaster throne and streets of gold, the walls of the New 
Jerusalem with their precious stones, instead of the gates 
of pearl, which are misinterpreted by modern theology to 
mean a literal heaven, in which they have borrowed the 
symbolism of the ancient planispheres of Egypt, illustrat- 
ing spiritual principles by precious stones and minerals, to 
picture the Christian heaven, have taken as a literal mean- 
ing that which Kabalistically was intended to illustrate 
principles, and have forgotten the simple declaration of 
Jesus, who is the teacher accredited in Christendom as 
declaring the true life and way." 

The " many mansions " in the Father's house could not 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERS0LL. 61 

certainly refer to any of the qualities of that kingdom of 
heaven which is portrayed by theology, for that heaven 
being but one city, and that city being of such a nature, 
and being only enjoyed by a select few, these could not be 
" the many mansions " spoken of, so we conclude that He 
intended by this simple method of speech to illustrate to 
them the many states of spirit life ; that those who pass 
into the spiritual existence are not confined or limited to 
one or two conditions, to a state of absolute happiness, or 
utter misery or despair, but that there must be gradations 
adapted to the conditions of all. 

As He was their teacher and friend, as the Christ Spirit, 
the spirit of truth pervaded Him and had given Him the 
power of utterance, so in passing from the mortal to the 
spiritual state, to this kingdom, these mansions of the 
Father, He was to prepare a place adapted for them. 

It seems to us that Christendom and all the Christian 
clergy have failed to understand the full promise contained 
in these words ; it seems to us that they have neglected 
the indications of the many states in spirit life ; have 
entirely overlooked the fact that there must be a state 
adapted to each man's condition when the spirit leaves the 
mortal body ; it also seems to us that they have made a 
more gross and material idea of heaven than there is any 
warrant for in the utterances of Christ, or in the Kabal- 
istic Symbolism of the beautiful vision of John. It seems 
to us they have made material instead of spiritual, the 
promise of salvation ; it seems to us that they have clothed 
the grave with shadow and terror ; all because they have 
not been able to interpret correctly the meaning of that 
which Jesus taught. It seems to us that the whole scheme 
of the different spiritual states is included in this one 
sentence and promise of Jesus. 

" Oh how feeble was the gleaming of spiritual things to 



62 KEASO^ YS. KEVELATIOtf. 

them (the disciples), how they clung to the senses ; how 
even Judas, betrayer that he was, hoped that Christ would 
declare Himself in all His material power at the last 
moment ! 

" But all was soon over, He disappeared from their 
sight, He was spiritually caught up into the upper heaven ; 
they saw His form no more, after the visible reappear- 
ance. Then came the long nisrht, the recession from 
spiritual belief; then came the different denominations, 
sects and factions which misinterpreted the teachings of 
Jesus ; then came the great final misinterpretation ; the 
conversion of Constantine to Christianity, and the setting 
of the seal of blood and the sanction of authority upon the 
teachings of Christ. No wonder that catechism and creed 
were needed to interpret this simple utterance after that ; 
no wonder that people turned away from this beautiful and 
divine promise to a more complicated scheme of salvation 
because they did not know what it meant. 

" Every real inspiration, however, declares the same 
thing ; though you are neither by Galilee nor upon Olivet 
to-day ; though you are neither in Jerusalem nor yet in the 
surrounding mountains, still this is a holy mount, you have 
come unto the shrine of spiritual truth and receive the 
same interpretation of the life that is beyond : ' In my 
Father's house are many mansions,' and those who have 
passed on before you have gone to prepare a place for you. 

" There is a mansion for each soul, one inner and divine 
mansion of eternal life, and this mansion is not physical, 
but is the light of the soul itself. So each one passes into 
the kingdom that is divine because it is the inheritance of 
each. You pass into the spiritual states that are accord- 
ing to your spiritual light and unfoldment; there is a 
place for the babe, Jesus said : ' of such are the kingdom 
of heaven ; ' and there is a place for the grown up men 



A REPLY TO EOBERT G. INGERSOLL. 63 

and women, for those have their work and their condition 
to fill in the Father's house ; and there is a place for the 
mother, who through being removed from the sight of her 
loved ones to that condition in spirit life that is her home, 
makes a mansion that shall be that of her loved ones when 
thej shall follow by her loving light ; you by your thought 
upbuild it aud make it white, and beautiful, and clear, and 
clean as your lives are. There is a mansion for those who 
are sainted, who rise from earthly conditions and surround- 
ings and under the light of the spirit enter the spiritual 
states adapted to their lives and unfoldment. Such man- 
sions would be spacious in spirit, the rooms would be filled 
with truth and divine aspirations, would be white with 
the light of prayer, and glorious with the deeds done in 
the body. 

"There is a mansion for those who are in shadow ; into 
the darkness of their own lives they enter, what they have 
woven around them, the mansion is of their own existence; 
this forms their surroundings, and their mansions are of 
the shadows they have made. Hatred, malice, striving 
and envying make shadows in your spirit home ; no dark 
hovel upon the earth, no cellar in which human beings 
grovel in their poverty and -shame can exceed in its 
shadows the mansion of the degraded spirit who knows 
not the light of love, the glory of unselfishness. 

"You make your mansions whether they be of light or 
of shadow ; whether they be spacious with the many wings 
of light that fill the universe, or whether they be the nar- 
row small heaven of individual theology. "We have seen 
the mansions of one educated in the narrow faith of a 
creed praying only to be individually saved; between 
two walls that shut out the light on all sides this individual 
spirit, who never dreamed of salvation for more than a 
select few was condemned for a time to dwell because he 



64 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

had made this mansion ; remember he had prayed indi- 
vidual] y for individual salvation, and only looked with fear 
and trembling lest his individual soul should be lost ; this 
heaven was only wide enough for the admission of the indi- 
vidual spirit ; cramped and dwarfed, without the presence 
of that Christ whom he had expected to see, and without the 
terror of that hell which he had almost feared ; still this 
narrow mansion would not be suited to the requirements 
of the immortal soul. After dwelling in it sufficiently 
long to realize that that could not be the kingdom of 
heaven, angel messengers and spirits who have gone on 
before to prepare a place for him, gradually would open 
the vision and set him free from the mansion which he 
had made. 

" We have seen the scales reversed by selfishness, where 
the individual life on earth had only been for self, where 
greed and the love of gain, avarice, and all selfishness had 
wrapped the spirit in its dreadful thrall; such as these 
enter the mansions that each individually has prepared ; 
they are built of the prison walls of sense, the dark shad- 
ows of their own lives reflected toward them, and nothing 
to subsist on in the universe of love except their own selfish 
desires. Oh how narrow is the mansion of him or her who 
lives for self alone. Though such as these inhabit palaces 
on earth, the home in the kingdom of the spirit is small 
and mean, and low, until they are set free by the pinions 
of love, by the one unselfish desire rising from within. 

"We have seen the kingdom of the mansion prepared 
by him who has desolated the lives of others, who has been 
like a bird of prey, whose only occupation was the fulfill- 
ing of individual ambition at the sacrifice of innocent life, 
at the cost of great labor and toil of others ; we have seen 
such an one he had prepared and built ; it was like a des- 
ert waste, like a wilderness, in which there was no fair or 



A KEPLY TO KOBEKT G. LffGEKSOLL. 65 

blessed thing ; all images of beauty were gone, only the arid 
parched condition of his own selfish desires, fulfilled to 
the utmost on earth mocking him in the mansion he had 
made. Instead of stately ships ^ which had been used to 
convey treasures at his bidding, instead of people fawning 
at his feet, instead of many lives dependent upon his word, 
beck and call, we have seen such an one surrounded by 
the shadows of his own misdeeds, vainly striving to find 
something new and fresh in that kingdom of satiety which 
he had fathomed for himself. Such is the mansion of those 
who are earth bound ; such as these are fettered still by 
the shadows they have created upon earth. Not so with 
those who lead lives of loving kindness, who fulfill their 
duties from day to day, who labor with their hands and 
brains for their loved ones and the benefit of mankind. 

" We have seen infants go out into bowers of loveliness 
with the sweet white blossoms all around them of their 
own innocence ; we have seen fair young maidens and 
young men who gave promise of good and exalted lives, 
pass into the mansions of the spirit prepared for them, 
while with the lilies of pure thoughts, radiant with the 
flowers of immortal hopes and aspirations like bowers of 
celestial splendor, woven of their fair young lives. These 
are they who prepare the mansions for you ; and when 
with weariness or the weight of time upon your form, you 
gladly lay down your burdens of mortal cares, you enter 
the mansions they have made for you. 

" We have seen the mother whose life on earth was a 
continuous sacrifice, who never felt that it was a sacrifice, 
so perfect was her love, ministering always to her chil- 
dren, always toiling day and night, always fulfilling the 
offices of duty uncomplainingly, and with glad and won- 
derful spirit, at last lay down the burden of mortal life and 
enter the mansion of the Father's house ; oh, how beautiful 



66 KEASCW VS. REVELATION. 

is the mansion that duty has fashioned, how perfect the 
life that loves ! She creates no narrow walls that divide 
her from those who have passed on before ; no parched 
weary desert of wasted energies and passions meet her 
there, but duties perfectly performed, a life absolutely 
fulfilled, and though she may have left her loved ones on 
the earth, she does not depart from them, her mansion 
reaches down and includes them in its delights. She 
still ministers to their needs, still fulfills the ofiices of 
love. 

" We have seen the mansions of the philosophers and 
prophets of truth, derided of man and stoned in the streets 
of cities built by men, those who have taught virtue, truth 
and immortality, as Socrates taught them to the material 
and idol-loving Greeks; we have seen the mansions of 
such girded around with the light of heaven, paven beneath 
and above with the surpassing splendor of truth, wide as 
the universe ; deep and high as truth itself, and filled with 
all fair thoughts and fair images that they had fashioned 
into their lives and teachings while upon earth. Such as 
these find no smallness in their mansions in the eternal 
home; they are as deep, high, and wise as truth, and 
knowledge, and wisdom, such are the walls and such are 
the dwelling-places into which they enter. 

" And you, dear friends, who have knowledge of spirit- 
ual existence, to whom the open communion between the 
two worlds is an ever-present fact ; to you who are daily 
conscious that you are preparing your eternal habitations, 
that you are making your mansions by what you do, and 
think, and live ; in the proportion as the deeds are for 
others, in proportion as your lives are free from selfishness, 
in proportion as you fulfilled the duties of the present hour 
to your uttermost knowledge, such is the state of prepara- 
tion for entering the mansion that is most delightful." 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 67 

We have dwelt with Mr. Ingersoll's fling at the acts of 
healing performed by Paul, where he quotes : 

"And Grod wrought miracles by the hands of Paul, so 
that from the body were brought unto the sick handker- 
chiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them 
and the evil spirits went out of them." 

While as Mr. Ingersoll avers he reads this passage with 
a smile, we read it as a veritable truth, a foundation prin- 
ciple of spiritual science, no more to be contravened than 
any demonstrated law of science. In fact, it stands on 
firmer foundations than does many of the admitted postu- 
lates of science and can be attested by tens of thousands 
of credible witnesses all over the land. From our own 
knowledge of the cures performed by the late Dr. Newton, 
so familiar to hundreds of credible witnesses in the metrop- 
olis and of recent occurrence, we smile at the inexcusable 
ignorance of Mr. Ingersoll and his " prayer gauge " of sci- 
ence, to have the temerity to put himself on record on a 
subject which he should not be ignorant of with all the 
light of the nineteenth century miracles flashing into his 
bandaged eyes — for basing the proofs upon the common 
laws of evidence alone, admissible in any court of justice, 
Mr. Ingersoll would be confronted with a thousand wit- 
nesses of the positive cures performed by Dr. Newton in 
our very midst ; and as St. Paul then manifesting the 
human life was no more to his age than Dr. Newton to 
our age, what more possible or probable than that St. 
Paul, himself a gifted medium, should have healed the 
sick and performed the cures attributed to him in the 
Gospel records ? and this carping of Mr. Ingersoll upon a 
matter of spiritual science of which he has never in- 
formed himself, betrays full as much of the bigotry and 
fanaticism of dogmatic Eeason as can be found among the 
votaries of dogmatic theology. 



68 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

The only real factor upon the planet capable of doing 
aught is spirit in its several forms of manifestation. Matter 
is inert, passive, spiritless, only as propelled by the spirit 
Its mediums of communication may be ignorant of the 
source of their several gifts, may not understand them, 
may from present environments antagonize their own 
powers in this direction, yet the measure of healing power 
they may exert, either in what is termed mind, faith or 
prayer cures, can only be governed by the spiritual helps 
that they are enabled to call around them in their minis- 
trations of healing, and they are of course governed in the 
results by the spiritual intelligences who guide their minis- 
trations, hence are not always certain of performing cures. 

It is a common question to ask, "Why if one person has 
received the gift of healing, may not another ? " 

This can be best replied to by citing the reader to St. 
Paul's lucid statement concerning the various spiritual 
gifts with which mortals are endowed, for he lived in a 
peculiar age when the manifestations of spirit power were 
abnormally developed as proven by almost every chapter 
of the Grospel records. This was notably shown at the 
Feast of the Harvest or the Day of Pentecost when they 
were all filled with the Holy Ghost (*. e. spirit power, an 
interpolation) and began to speak with other tongues, as 
the Spirit gave them utterance." (2d Chapter Acts.) 

Paul says of the several gifts of the spirit : 

" Now there are diversity of gifts, but the same Spirit. 

" For to one is given the Spirit of the word of wisdom, 
to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit. 

" To another faith by the same Spirit, to another the 
gift of healing by the same Spirit. 

" To another the working of miracles, to another proph- 
ecy, another discerning of spirits, to another diverse 
kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 69 

" But all these worketh tliat one and the selfsame Spirit, 
awarding unto every man severally as he will." 

Our age is remarkable like that in which Paul lived, for 
the gifts of the spirit, especially in the acts of healing 
through the several avenues of intercourse with the spirit 
world, and indicates unerringly the opening era of a higher 
spiritual consciousness for the planet than has ever before 
been obtained. 

But admitting there are many failures or unsuccessful 
experiences in what are termed mind, faith and prayer 
cures, still the fact is assured and trebly assured that there 
is a spiritual force working directly under divine guid- 
ance toward the amelioration of pain and suffering on the 
planet, and that as we grow more into or toward the 
spiritual life, it will be easier and more possible for min- 
istering spirits to aid mortals in banishing sin, pain and 
disease. 

The healings of Jesus so often chronicled by the Evan- 
gelists, though governed by the laws of spirit control over 
matter (and not as miracles) were essentially different from 
the common forms of healing, because He alone acting 
directly under divine law with, the spirit largely dominat- 
ing over the material life, was able to make instantaneous 
cures, and because too, these spiritual laws were entirely 
familiar to him, and the spirit world acted in full and 
hearty accord with his ministrations. 

Mr. Ingersoll asks oracularly, if it was necessary for 
Christ to deliver to an uninstructed population of a par- 
ticular age a certain religion suited only for that particular 
age, why should a civilized and scientific age 1800 years 
afterward, be absolutely bound by that religion ? If the 
religion of Christ was for that age, is it for this ? 

To which we reply emphatically, yes, and it is owing 
directly to the unfulfilled mission of Jesus Christ as the 



70 REASON YS. REVELATION". 

Saviour 01 mankind in its broadest and most catholic sense, 
that the world is still groping in spiritual darkness ; is 
still practicing under the code of Moses given to guide an 
unspiritual people just emerging from the shadows of idol- 
atry, while claiming to be guided by the spirit of Christ, 
arid it is only as humanity begins to live toward the high 
ideal set for us by this great, grand Spirit, that the king- 
dom of heaven, the kingdom of justice, of righteousness, 
can ever be attained. 

Slowly but surely are we nearing that long sought for 
millennium, and every cycling age is bearing the ripe fruit 
of the spirit of Christ in myriad forms of expression, and 
whatever fruit it so far bears, spring from the seed, sown 
in this awakening spiritual consciousness that we are some 
Way allied to a divine power, and that the gentle Saviour 
represents that divine power in humanity. It is symbol- 
ized in the Christian Church as in no other form so pro- 
nounced, and it is voiced in the spiritual philosophy as 
taught to-day in myriad forms. But when we turn to fall- 
ible human reason, vaunted science, and the gods of dog- 
matic intellect, the spirit of Christ is absent and empty. 
Let us ask who has practiced more His pure and holy pre- 
cepts, who has exhibited the most freely the Chris tly beati- 
tudes of love and justice? It is those only who inspired 
by the spirit of Christ even though they knew Him not, 
have striven to make the lot of humanity more tolerable, 
more livable, more endurable. "Who has abolished human 
slavery, the whipping post, has pleaded for the prisoner, 
interfered with cruelty to children, and to animals, and 
have inaugurated the many humanizing influences to ameli- 
orate the outward conditions of mankind ? The practice 
of these beatitudes is warming humanity into a higher and 
more exalted spiritual consciousness until ours and the 
spirit world will beat in unison with His life. In the fru- 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 71 

ition of that long dream, Mr. Ingersoll, in the words you 
have quoted from Mr. Gladstone's defense, will not 

" Mercy and judgment have met together, righteousness 
and peace have kissed each other." 

As the whole scope of Mr. Ingersoll's argument was to 
entirely disparage the Bible records, as records of early 
Christianity, and impliedly to impugn the personality and 
divinity of Jesus, and therefore very misleading and harm- 
ful, we will quote from a chapter that we have prepared 
for a more voluminous work, " The Christ of Humanity," 
which we hope soon to publish, bearing on this general 
subject. 

"Whence but from heaven could men, unskilled in arts, 
In different ages bom, in different parts, 
Weave such agreeing truths, or how or why 
Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie ? 
Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, 
Starving their gains, and martyrdom their price." 

It would seem a work of supererogation to essay the 
proofs of the identity, that He (Jesus) dwelt here in the 
human form and lived the natural life of man. It has 
often been attempted by theologians, but the extreme 
paucity of historical facts to supplement the author's 
efforts in this direction has always been a marked feature 
which the enemies of the Christian religion have used to 
their advantage in argument. 

The evangelical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and 
John seem to be as fairly authenticated as veritable rec- 
ords as any of the current history of their age, and outside 
these we have occasional evidence from historians who, if 
not contemporary with. Jesus, were writing in succeeding 
cycles in which His life and ministry could be distinctly 
remembered. 

We lay no stress upon the brief mention of His life by 



72 EEASON VS. BEVELATIOtf. 

Josephus, because the slight mention of Him by that 
author has been charged as an interpolation of the early 
Christians, and because Josephus was a Jew and bound by 
national prejudice against the Saviour to ignore Him alto- 
gether. We will group some of the strongest histori- 
cal evidences to the identity of Jesus in contempora- 
neous history, but we have evidences outside all these, 
and some of them gleaned from the fiercest enemies 
of the Nazarene, which we shall adduce in proof of the 
material life of Jesus of Nazareth. Our proofs of the 
personality of the Saviour dwelling in the material form 
have been derived largely from our acquaintance with the 
spiritual philosophy in its higher unfoldings, aside from 
revelations that we have received, which in themselves pre- 
clude a doubt. But we will first deal with the facts of 
secular history, which the inquiring and skeptical mind 
will demand. 

Prominent among these is the important testimony of 
Tacitus, a historian without a peer in his age, which was 
written twenty-five years after the crucifixion. He was a 
heathen writer, so termed in contradistinction to the 
Christians. Tacitus was writing the history of Nero's 
cruel reign when the following passage occurs : 

" With this view he [Nero] inflicted the most exquisite 
torments on those men who, under the vulgar appellation 
of Christians, were already burdened with deserved infamy. 
They derived their name and origin from" Christ, who in 
the reign of Tiberius had suffered death by the sentence 
of the Procurator Pontius Pilate. For a while this dire 
superstition was checked, but again it burst forth, and not 
only spread itself over Judea, the first seat of this mis- 
chievous sect, but was introduced into Eome, the common 
asylum which receives and protects whatever is impure 
and atrocious." 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 73 

u The confessions of those who were arrested discovered 
a vast multitude of their accomplices, and they were all 
convicted, not so much for the crime of setting fire to the 
city as for their hatred of human kind. 

" They died in their torments, and their last hours were 
imbittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on 
crosses, others were sewed up in the skins of wild beasts 
and exposed to the fury of dogs, others again, smeared 
over with combustible materials, were used as torches to 
illuminate the darkness of the night. 

" The gardens of Nero were destined for a melancholy 
spectacle which was accompanied with a horse race, and 
honored with the presence of the Emperor, who mingled 
with the populace in the attitude of a charioteer. 

" The guilt of the Christians, deserved indeed, was 
changed into commiseration from the opinion that these 
unhappy wretches were sacrificed, not so much for 
the public welfare as to the cruelty of a jealous ty- 
rant." 

It would seem from this revolting record that the fell 
spirit of evil which had sought the life of the gentle 
Nazarene operating through the plastic and facile organism 
of a ISTero, was seeking again with a stronger hand and 
more malign purpose to kill and destroy the seeds of 
goodness and truth sown broadcast by the bounteous 
hand of the crucified Jesus, and through the long, 
long centuries has the contest been waged with varying 
fortunes. 

Next in the line of historical facts, and perhaps the 
very most important among the heathen records, are the 
letters between the Emperor Trajan and a governor of 
one of his provinces upon the Euxine. 

The authenticity of the correspondence we have never 
heard gainsaid, and their memoranda has come down to 
4 



74 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

us in history as one of the crown jewels of Christian au- 
thority relating to their unhappy infancy. 

It was the custom of the governors entrusted with the 
several provinces to give yearly reports to the Eoman 
Emperor, and Pliny makes his statement, concerning the 
early Christians, somewhat as an Indian commissioner 
would detail the unwarranted chastisement of the poor 
Indian in our own land. Pliny writes to his emperor 
thus: 

"It is my custom, sir, to refer all things of which I 
have any doubt to you ; for who can better direct my 
judgment in its hesitation, or instruct my understanding 
in its ignorance ? I never had the fortune to be present 
at any examination of Christians before I came to this 
province. I am, therefore, at a loss to determine what is 
the usual mode of inquiry or punishment, and to what 
length either of them is to be carried. It has also been a 
question very problematical whether any distinction should 
be made between the young and the old, the tender and 
the robust ; whether any room should be given for repen- 
tance, or whether the guilt of Christianity once incurred is 
capable of being expiated by the most unequivocal re- 
traction ; whether the name itself abstracted from any 
flagitiousness of conduct, or the crimes connected with 
the name, be the object of punishment. 

" In the meantime this has been the method with those 
who have been brought before me as Christians. I asked 
them if they were Christians. If they pleaded guilty I 
interrogated them twice afresh, with menace of capital 
punishment, and in case of obstinate perseverance, I or- 
dered them executed, for of this I had no doubt, whatever 
was the nature of their religion, that a sullen and obdu- 
rate inflexibility called for the vengeance of the magis- 
trate. ..... 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 75 

" An anonymous libel was exhibited with a catalogue 
of names of persons who yet declared they were not Chris- 
tians nor ever had been, and they repeated after me an 
invocation of the gods and of your image, which, for this 
purpose, I had ordered to be brought with the images of 
the deities. 

" They performed sacred rites with incense and wine, 
and execrated Christ, none of which things I am told a real 
Christian can ever be compelled to do. On this account 
I dismissed them." 

Then follows a reply from the emperor to Pliny : 

" You have done perfectly right in the inquiry you 
have made concerning Christians, for truly no general 
rules can be laid down which will apply to all cases. 

"These people must be sought after. If they are 
brought before you and convicted, let them be capitally 
punished. Yet with the restriction that if any renounce 
Christianity and evidence his sincerity by supplicating 
our gods, however suspected he may be for the past, he 
shall obtain pardon for the future hj his repentance." 

These memorable epistles were written about seventy 
years after the tragedy of the cross, and their statements are 
entirely authentic. Pliny's report proves conclusively that 
infant Christianity had for its founder the Christ of Cal- 
vary, a veritable personality, and that these persecuted 
martyr spirits formed the nucleus of His devoted followers. 

The next historically verifying witness to the material 
presence of the Saviour upon our side of the river of life, 
is derived from a notable essay written against the early 
Christians by Celsus, an able heathen writer in the latter 
part of the second century, A. D., termed " The True 
Word," which work was criticised by Origen, a bold and 
profound Christian writer, some sixty years thereafter, in 
which the statements made by Celsus were traversed and 



76 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

used to prove the existence of Jesus, along with impor- 
tant documentary evidence, wherein was made mention 
many of the evangelical records embraced in the four 
Gospels, so full of incidents relating to Jesus, as to leave 
no doubt but that the four Gospels were extant at the 
time, and were objects of adverse criticism by heathen 
scholars. Celsus was evidently writing concerning men 
and events which had transpired and passed into history, 
fully and definitely as any contemporaneous annals. 

We cannot give such copious selections from the writ- 
ings of Celsus, as the case demands, to establish through 
an enemy of the Christians the fact of Jesus' existence, 
but cannot forbear grouping together some of the most 
salient statements of Celsus, because they go so fully to 
establish both the personality of Jesus and the veritable- 
ness of the Gospels concerning His identity. 

Celsus says : "I could say many things concerning the 
affairs of Jesus, and these, too, true — different from those 
written by the Disciples of Christ." 

" It is a fiction of theirs (the Evangelists) that Jesus 
foreknew and foretold all things that befell him." 

Celsus mentions in adverse criticism incidents in the 
birth of Jesus, the worship of the wise men, his refuge in 
Egypt, the order of Herod to take all infant life at that 
period, the baptism by John and the transfiguration. 
Again we quote : 

" Jesus taking to himself some ten or eleven abjects, 
vile publicans and sailors, went about with them, getting 
his subsistence in a base and shameless manner. How 
should we take him for a god, who, as we understood, 
performed none of those things which were promised ? " 

Celsus also taunts Jesus with not being able to escape 
the punishment of the cross, and narrates the betrayal, 
the defection of some of the disciples, the passion hours 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 77 

before Calvary, and the crucifixion, and in general sup- 
ports the Gospel records. 

We can hardly do justice to the subject of the infancy 
of the Christian religion without mentioning the sect of 
Essenes who antidated the Judean Christians by some two 
hundred years, and were a very devout people manifest- 
ing the humane life long before the Christian era. 

Our object is to show that in degree as these devotional 
people were able to comprehend God and the spiritual life 
hereafter, they too were manifestations of the same spirit. 
And if we can trace this sentiment of a deific power, an 
all-wise Being to whom the great family of nations are 
inseparably allied, we shall find that sentiment pervading 
a large portion of the human race. Mr. Milman, a Chris- 
tian author of much celebrity, in his history of Christian- 
ity, says : 

" That the doctrine of the incarnation ' or God made 
manifest through man,' was in essence the doctrine of over 
one-half the human race, as manifested through the Hin- 
doos, Persians, Greeks and Egyptians, representing all the 
spirituality there was in the world at that time, which was 
reflected from the School of Alexandria, from the teach- 
ings of Zoroaster, of Buddha, of Plato, of Socrates, of 
Judaism, and later of Essenism among the Jews before the 
birth of the Nazarene, and were all faint manifestations of 
the same spirit which blossomed into consciousness with 
the birth and presence of Jesus Christ." The spirit of 
truth, and the spirit of love are the rich legacies left us 
by the gentle Saviour, and these are struggling to express 
their beatitudes in myriad forms among men. 

These beatitudes are often remarkably voiced from the 
spirit side of life, from those who have broadened their 
spiritual natures, have gained a large spirituality, and are 
to us very convincing evidences, because they come to us 



78 SEASON TS. REVELATION. 

in the light of concurrent revelations, and we always study 
their averments with deep interest. 

In a remarkable discourse by spirit John "Wesley 
through the entranced state of Mrs. Eichmond, the follow- 
ing passages occur : 

" These words which I speak to-night may not be the 
last that I shall speak through mortal lips ; but it is 
to announce to you another change in my spiritual 
state different from that which I have previously de- 
scribed through this instrument (the medium) that I am 
here. 

" It is to state that having found my heaven, not in any 
limited sense, not in the narrow abode which the theology 
in which I was reared would fain have placed it, not 
within the circumscribed walls of a creed made, or a man 
made heaven, having found my Master not imperiously 
seated on the right hand of the Infinite Father, unap- 
proachable and unattainable, but abiding in the midst of 
a multitude who with Him were ministering unto multi- 
tudes of others, abiding in the midst of those who turned 
to him as teacher and friend ; having found my light and 
my guide there in following as upon earth the footsteps of 
Him who taught humility and loving kindness, I have 
ministered continually seeking to undo much of the theo- 
logical wrong which unwittingly my earthly estate be- 
queathed, and seeking to lift such minds from the encom- 
passing fear of death and the terrors of eternal torture as 
I could approach. 

" All this ministration has been doubly sweet from the 
consciousness that no effort is in vain, however long it 
may lie in producing fruition. However long the light 
may seem varied, the gem at last comes forth in crystalline 
completeness. I assure you these days and hours of what 
would seem a brief eternity itself, compared to human life, 



A KEPLT TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 79 

have been all joyfully, gladly expended in this work of 
the immortal life. 

" I have never dared to hope, I had not believed, and 
did not know that in any position I might fill, or any 
place which I might inhabit in the spiritual home, I should 
be so near to that truth, that impersonation of the Divine, 
as I feel myself to be in the presence of that benignant face, 
in the light of that benignant countenance ; surrounded by 
those who seek to do that which He taught upon earth. I 
have learned the meaning of all the problems that vex 
the earthly mind. I have solved the seeming insolvable 
problems of human misery, of human emancipation. I 
find there are no technical problems to overcome. I find 
there are no superficial methods to adopt, but that the 
deep, infinite meaning of the human life, human suffer- 
ing, human experience, human knowledge and attainment 
is the ineffable love that abides in the universe, and makes 
men co-heirs and co-partners in eternity by the very fact, 
that of their immortal nature. 

" Having found this central truth ; having found that 
man has not fallen from his high estate, but abides in it 
by the perpetual love of the Infinite ; having discovered 
the salvation through Christ, through the principle wher- 
ever found, means the perception of the spiritual and 
immortal part in man ; having discovered that the only 
pathway to salvation lies through the knowledge of the 
spirit and its possessions, I need not longer perplex you 
nor myself with those doubtful problems that theology 
alone has reared, but which were never reared in the 
simple faith, the sweet utterance, the absolute benediction 
of love that came with the Teacher nearly two thousand 
years ago." 

• • • • . . . 

"In the present hour are there not messengers also 



80 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

heralding the dawn and advent of the spirit of truth ? and 
already the mighty potencies of that angelic voice are 
heard over the lands of the world, and the spiritual king- 
doms are thrilling with the new light and the fire. If the 
Christ Spirit had departed from the external temples of 
worship in olden times ; if the spirit of truth had forsaken 
the temples of Jewish inspiration ; if in the thraldom of 
the external senses the Church has grown cold and life- 
less, and the Jewish men of learning and priests were dis- 
cussing not the principles of truth, but mere doctrines, 
what shall you say of the present hour, when the Church, 
losing its vitality, still descends to contend over technicali- 
ties, and where as in the Eeformation, men would grow 
riotous and mad with frenzy over some technical interpre- 
tation of the word Logos ; what shall you say of the vitality 
of that Church which with its many pointed fingers toward 
heaven still refuses admission to the spirit of truth in any 
form of angelic administration to-day, and turns aside from 
the very open gateway that leads to its own interpretation 
and to its own foundation ? 

" What shall you say of that Church that, putting saints 
to death, turns again in two or three centuries to worship 
them ; scorned, despised and ostracised, calls them at last 
its own, and by its own wrongs upbuilds itself upon the 
foundation of human error, creating instead of a shrine, a 
charnel house of its own offenses ? 

" But that other broader Church which is abroad in the 
world, has it not been heralded with a spirit of human 
brotherhood, has it not been announced by the tokens and 
signs of the sky, has not the voice of prophecy and inspi- 
ration foretold it, and are the gifts not being poured out 
on all flesh as they were promised, are not these the lat- 
ter days of the kingdom of Christ, and is not the spirit 
of truth approaching, this comforter that revealeth all 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. TN"GERSOLL. 81 

things, and those that have ears to hear do they not hear 
the voice of the spirit, those that have eyes, do they not 
see visions of the spiritual realm, ' those that have under- 
standing, do they not comprehend the angelic states that 
lie beyond?"' 

The commandment upon which hangs the law and the 
prophets in spiritual things, was the only positive com- 
mand of the gentle Saviour, and it echoes through the 
planet to-day with renewed force and vehemence. 

" A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
one another." 

It is the negation of very much that theology has taught 
along down the centuries, and confounds and antago- 
nizes all shades of creedal doctrines. It is the psalm of 
life, the rainbow of promise to the weary children of earth. 
Canon Farrar, to whom the world is so deeply indebted 
in separating the wheat from the chaff in modern theology, 
closes a discourse on "God is Love" with this remarkable 
episode : 

"The words do not occur in the Gospel of John ' God 
is love,' and yet they are the epitome of the Gospel, and 
the epitome of the whole Scriptures, and the epitome of 
the historv of mankind, and as such thev are a standing 
protest against all that is worst in many of the world's 
schemes of inferential theology." 

We will close our very interesting and profoundly in- 
structive testimony from those who have passed to the 
spirit side of life and therefore speak to us again with the 
illumined vision of spiritual experience. 

To us these loving messages are the refined gold of 
truth, and as such we give them out. 

It has often been a stumbling block to those familiar 
with spirit intercourse, why so many confusing and seem- 
ingly contradictory reports concerning spiritual things, 
4* 



82 KEAS03" VS. REVELATION". 

and the accompanying message from the sweet souled 
spirit, Melancthon, the friend of Martin Luther, will serve 
to explain some things that are not plain. It came to us 
through inspired lips. 

"You have asked the question that has been asked 
hundreds of times before by others on both sides of the 
River of Life, namely : ' Why is it that there are so many 
contradictory communications concerning a spirit of such 
grandeur of character, such loftiness of thought and at 
the same time such simplicity of life and teachings as 
Jesus of Nazareth ? If any such spirit really exists or 
has ever existed, it would seem that such a spirit, such a 
character could not hide himself or conceal his acts if he 
dwells in the midst of the throng who inhabit the spirit 
world.' 

"I can better answer this question by asking another, 
than in any other way : " Why is it that truly great men 
on earth are so little known, and why is it that children 
are not full grown men and women? " 

"In the first place it is a great mistake to suppose that 
spirits who are out of the material form are better acquainted 
with each other than spirits still clothed upon with the 
flesh. Up to a certain point spirits who pass out of the 
material life are exactly the same as when in the form, 
and no more, possessing no more knowledge or prescience 
than when they were in the earth life. Hence, if a spirit 
pass from the earth to the Spirit side of life who believes not 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, or who has no correct conception 
of Him, he cannot return and give any information concern- 
ing a Spirit of whom he knows nothing. 

To-day there are few on the earth who have any know- 
ledge of that grand Spirit who is above all others. The 
great mass of spirits who return with messages from the 
beyond are exactly on the same plane of thought, of ex- 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 83 

perience, of wisdom, of love, as those in the form unto 
whom they communicate, consequently they are unable to 
enlighten those whom they profess to teach certain truths. 

Had they the slightest knowledge or conception of Him 
who is the King of Kings upon this planet they would 
never dare to speak His blessed name save in reverence 
and love. 

They evidence the sphere to which they belong, and 
their state of development in growth and knowledge, 
divine wisdom and love, by the manner in which they 
speak of Him. 

From the beginning of time on this planet until this 
hour He has been with the children of earth, caring for 
them with a patience, a tenderness compared to which a 
mother's love for her first born babe is tame and pas- 
sionless. 

No coldness, indifference, hatred, abuse, outrage, or the 
attempt to ignore His existence on the part of the poor, 
struggling, growing children of this earth can ever estrange 
His love, or for one instant cause Him to close His work of 
divine, patient watching, waiting and guiding of even the 
humblest creature His own Heavenly Father created and 
placed here for growth back to Himself, as sentient, rational 
creatures. Neither can aught cause Him to turn away 
from this work ; the completion of the destiny of the 
human Spirit. When God created this planet and cast it 
into space among the universe of worlds, He gave it into the 
hands of His beloved Son to bring into spiritual perfection, 
together with all the human spirits He placed here at the 
beginning of time, and when those spirits have grown to a 
spiritual stature where they comprehend their divine head, 
their King, Leader and Friend, as this divine Spirit is, 
they will then become joint heirs with Him upon this per- 
fected and spiritualized earth. 



84 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

Do not fear to rest ever so heavily on Him or trust Him 
in perfect faith, for this is just what He is watching, wait- 
ing, laboring for constantly, to attract every human soul 
to do. To put such trust, such faith, such confidence in 
Him that they will know that they have only to ask for 
any good thing to receive it. 

The power to speak on this (to me) subject of all subjects 
fails. But I have already said enough to show you that 
spirits who malign or speak falsely of Him know Him not, 
neither have they ever known Him, for when once a Spirit 
comes into this divine knowledge, it never again fails it, 
no matter what form it may put on while undergoing 
development. 

" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, literally, and you 
shall know no more pain, no more want, no more sorrow 
forever. " 

We will close this line of instructive testimony with a 
short extract from a communication from our own Mother 
spirit voiced, bearing directly on this subject matter. 

"You may think it strange that He who guides all 
things on this earth is unknown unto these purely intel- 
lectual spirits, but if you reflect for a moment that He is a 
Spirit of Spirits, whose dwelling place is in the realm of 
ideas, the resdon of love, wisdom and harmonv, and that 
these purely-intellectualists have no conception of any such 
beatific sphere. He comes to the children of earth in ways 
that are unknown to these, as your doings and acts in your 
own house are unknown to the passer by." 

There are two central thoughts belonging to the res gesta 
of the spiritual philosophy, which we would focus strongly 
in the mind of the thoughtful reader, the harmful fallacy 
of a physical resurrection as taught by theology, and the 
still more harmful fallacy of science in placing reason 
above intuition ; and while we have touched upon the lat- 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 85 

ter fallacy in our general remarks, we wo aid amplify these 
basic errors to the better comprehension of the reader. 

When human society shall have grown into a conscious- 
ness and receptivity to the spiritual significance of the 
Biblical records, their interpretation and true meaning will 
give rest and assurance of the future life, where now doubts 
and gloomy fears vex and sadden the mind seeking for 
some stable ground of faith. 

The physical resurrection of the material body which 
a benighted theology has so sedulously endeavored to 
inculcate is abhorrent and unbelievable. 

It was a relic of a very material age which should have 
been relegated to the nursery tales of the infancy of spirit- 
ual consciousness and aspiration in man. It has nothing 
cheerful or convincing in its conceptions, and as a dogma 
of theology vexes and perplexes the minds of the weak, 
and insults the understanding of the wise. Its spiritual 
import only should be inculcated in lighting the pathway 
toward the final home of the spirit, the life aboon. 

The lesson of either, with the mission of the persecuted 
Saviour, and the risen Lord, should have a new signifi- 
cance and a more tangible comprehension to the earthly 
mind seeking for light and comfort. 

" To-day our Lord is risen, 
New life to earth He gives, 
And every suffering soul shall live 
Because our Saviour lives." 

We feel that we can best focus the ideas of a material 
and a spiritual resurrection, and that still more subtle 
problem, fallible human reason vs. intuition, which is the 
reasoning faculty of the spirit, by quoting from one of 
the beautiful inspirational lessons given through the 
inspired lips of W. J. Colville in an Easter discourse. 

"The story of the Eesurrection of Jesus, as told by 



86 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

the Evangelists is full of hope and glad suggestiveness. 
In its old literal dress it has suggested so much of 
darkness, difficulty and limitations to the human mind 
that the joy-bells pealing on Easter morn must have 
sounded jangled, harsh and out of tune to those who 
could not see a universal light, an all pervading truth 
in the story so often rehearsed, which yet in many cir- 
cles where its letter was idolized, was so little understood 
in any spiritual sense. 

"Let us think of Jesus as a typical hero, a representative 
of the human soul ; let us think of the thirty -three years 
of His earthly life, and especially of the last three years of 
them as typical of the experiences through which all must 
pass ere they can reach the glories of a spiritual resurrec- 
tion. First, there is a cross to be borne, then a crown to 
be worn. 

"There can be no Easter Sunday without a Good Friday, 
and the very darkest day in man's experience, in the whole 
cycle of his education for eternity is emphatically a good 
day. 

" Nothing is easier than to persuade the happy and the 
prosperous that all is for the best, but to preach the Gospel 
to the poor and wretched, seems like cold, harsh, unsym- 
pathizing mockery, unless the preacher is one who has 
gone through some bitter experience which he can relate 
to his hearers, and has experienced a blessing therefrom 
which no other discipline could impart." 

"Jesus as God could not prove the immortality of the 
human soul, He could only do so as man," so say all theo- 
logians. The human spirit and the human body are all 
that we can lay claim to ; thus it would be no evidence of 
our resurrection even though God, or a being totally dis- 
tinct from ourselves, should rise after real or seeming 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 87 

dissolution. But what do we really need in an hour of 
doubt and sorrow? Do we feel satisfied with evidences of 
immortality furnished us by other minds ? It would be 
cold comfort indeed for a mother, sorrowing over the loss 
of a beloved child, to be told that certain eminent person- 
ages were convinced of a conscious hereafter. She could 
not see with their eyes or understand with their intellects ; 
but if, on the other hand, all the presumed savants of the 
world were to call a solemn council, deliberate on immor- 
tality and report against its truth, at the very moment they 
were issuing their pretentious doctrine, couched in the 
grandiloquent language of the schools, pronouncing life 
after death a mere delusion, some poor orphan, widow or 
bereaved parent might be the welcome recipient of tidings 
from the spirit life, convincing them beyond a peradven- 
ture of the falsity of the theologians and the scientists' 
stilted manifesto. 

A company of blind men might gather to deny the 
existence of color ; a company of deaf men might pass a 
verdict pronouncing ever}' one who pretended to hear 
anything insane ; but would the fact of sound and color 
be altered thereby in the estimation of those who saw 
and heard? 

If you have eyes you do not ask if Mr. Huxley has ad- 
mitted that anything is red in the world. If you have ears 
to hear, you do not wait to know if Herbert Spencer believes 
in the existence of sounds produced by the singing of 
birds. If either of those most learned and able gentle- 
men were to deny color you would pronounce him 
afflicted with color blindness, and tender your sympathies 
for his affliction ; if the other should deny sound, you 
would feel sorrow at his deafness. We might as well, 
however, accept the verdict against sound or color, given 
by a deaf or blind man, as to take the trouble to employ 



88 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

learned committees to fathom for us the mysteries of 
spirits. 

It was just this personal demonstration of immortality 
to the woman who came to the sepulcher before daybreak 
on the first Easter Sunday, and to the disciples later on in 
the same day and during succeeding days, which consti- 
tuted that proof palpable of immortality, for which they 
were so eagerly hungering and thirsting. 

Their beloved friend and teacher appeared to them in 
such a manner, that though at first they may have doubted 
whether it was really He who stood before them, or an- 
other, though there may have been a shadow of doubt 
lingering in the minds of some, even after the most mar- 
velous phenomena, " Though they believed on Him, but 
some doubted," may have expressed the state of feeling 
common even during the forty days, when He was wont to 
appear to them so mysteriously and yet so convincingly, 
we cannot fail to see that no one interpretation of the 
manner of His appearance can be made explanatory of all 
the recorded facts. 

It is invariably the case that divers manifestations are 
given by one and the same spirit to meet the require- 
ments of various states and conditions of mind. Let 
us look over a few of the leading incidents in the Grospel 
story and see if we cannot discern, where the diversity is 
the most conspicuous, and even the shadow deepest, at 
least a glimmer of bright spiritual light 

Mary Magdalen does not know Jesus when He first ap- 
pears to her and mistakes Him for the gardener. 

Now, if He appears to her at all why does He not appear 
in a manner distinctly recognizable, why mystify or con- 
fuse her, why not give the most clear and unmistakable 
manifestations of His presence ? 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 89 

To bring the matter down to these times, why does not 
a revelation from spirit life come to the world in so undis- 
guised a form that no one can reject it unless wilfully ? 
Surely, because the majority of men and women are so 
immured in sense, so devoted to the pursuits and pleasures 
of material life, so ultra-physical in their demands, that a 
revelation coming to them in the form in which they 
would most readily receive it, would often confirm them 
in materiality, rather than lift them to a higher plane of 
spiritual perception. 

Now, imagine for a moment a demonstration from 
spirit life wholly sensuous in its presentation, the senses 
only the object of appeal ; would such a revelation, if con- 
stantly repeated, do anything more than re-embody a 
departed friend ? Would it, could it lift the spectator to 
a higher plane of thought and action, and could it qualify 
them for a spiritual manner of life in the eternal world ? 

We often hear people say : "I believe and yet I doubt." 
"I sometimes have my doubts " is a very common expres- 
sion. Belief is not enough, it is unsatisfactory. "I be- 
lieve in God ; I believe in immortality ; I believe in spirit 
communion." These are inadequate phrases ; they are 
stamped unmistakably with insufficiency. 

You have no doubt heard revivalists talk of "finding 
Christ," and has it not often struck you how much more 
satisfactory it would be to find Christ, than simply to be- 
lieve in Him? Creeds are never enough to content the 
spirit; "credo," I believe, must be set aside for "scio," I 
know, ere the spirit can enter into rest. 

New evidence to the senses are inadequate from the very 
nature of the case ; we can think beyond sense ; we know 
how illusive and delusive outward appearances are ; we 
know how often we are forced to admit the truth of Long- 



90 REASON VS. REVELATION". 

fellow's assertion, "Things are not what they seem;" 
sunrise and sunset, the fixity and repose of the earth, the 
existence of a firmament and a horizon, are all apparent 
but unreal. What we discern with our senses we often 
discern untruly, and yet when such meditations as these 
lead us to the brink of a most pathetic infidelity, we are 
at once comforted as we reflect on the errors of false 
judgments of sense being all errors of limitations, not one 
of them errors of exaggeration. 

How small the sun appears to be, how large it really is ; 
how little the stars look and yet how great they are; 
there is always a transcend ant overreaching reality whose 
immensity appeals to us by its very majesty when we 
think there is only some little world which we can meas- 
ure with our one foot rule. 

Of one thing we are certain as of our own existence, and 
that is the infinite superiority of life to everybody's opin- 
ion of it. Is life worth living ? Yes, and a million times 
more worth living than the happiest, wisest and most 
hopeful person can imagine it to be. Is love immortal, 
are our affections deathless? Yes, and a million times 
more blessedly so than it hath entered into the human 
heart to conceive. We must lose the shadow to grasp the 
substance, and let us beware lest in our too great eager- 
ness to grasp the shadow, we do not imitate the folly of 
the dog in the fable who lost his good wholesome piece of 
meat through falling frantically in love with its shadow 
in the water. 

Do not let us prize our outward blessings so highly 
that in the idolatry of sense we blunt those only percep- 
tions which can unlock for us the treasures of the im- 
mortal world. Jesus makes Himself known to Mary by a 
word. He speaks to her, and though she does not recog- 
nize the outward appearance, she feels intuitively that it 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 91 

is really He. She answers Him at once, intuition is beyond 
reason; where reason fails, there intuition comes to the 
rescue ; intuition is the all embracing sense of spirit, the 
fount from whence all the senses of the body flow. How 
often do we err, and that grievously, because we turn 
away from intuition to follow the uncertain light of reason. 
What we call reason is the lower reason, intuition is the 
higher reason, it is angelic, divine reason. Our intuitions 
tell us more than our intellects can discover with all their 
searchings. Intuition detects love, truth, in a word, 
everything immortal ; it sees through shams as easily as 
a man looks through glass. It reveals truth at once, it 
knows, it speaks with the authority of knowledge, and 
when we hear it we are convinced. 

The intuitive faculty is necessary for the true discern- 
ment of spirits ; ordinary clairvoyance may see a form and 
describe it, but it takes intuition to know whether that 
form is an honest representation of a reality behind it, or 
only a mass to cover up deception. You cannot deceive 
a truly intuitive person, lies are of no avail, misrepresen- 
tations are seen through, at a glance; this gift alone 
enables us to be absolutely sure of truth, this alone 
enables us to know ourselves absolutely immortal." 

The church, in the catholic sense, is fairly entitled to 
the guidance of the spiritual education of humanity by 
her position as a great spiritual center, to which the 
spiritually minded naturally gravitate to learn if there be 
aught to satisfy the cravings of the spirit for light and 
truth concerning immortality, and it is certain she can 
never become that center in reality until she opens her 
doors to the myriad forms of spiritual ministrations 
through spirit communion, which are struggling so bravely 
for utterance in our age, in every land, and she is doubly 
entitled to this beneficent mission by the fact that almost 



92 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

alone, she in degree recognizes the status and mission of 
the ISTazarene as the power behind the throne of omnipo- 
tence in the control of the planet and the guidance of 
humanity, into rest and peace for the tempest-tossed spirit 
of man. We say in degree only, to qualify the statement, 
because the church in her zeal to follow the idols of the- 
ology, the idols of priestcraft, of ritual, form and dogma, 
has measurably lost the substance, pure religion. That 
pure religion made manifest in the life, is sufficient in 
itself to call to our aid all forms of angelic ministration 
with which to upbuild and adorn the temple of humanity. 

The spirit world and ours are almost running in parallel 
lines, and when we shall, in purity of heart and intensity 
of desire, seek spirit intercourse, the spirit world of causes 
and the material world of effects will begin to beat in 
harmony and unison, and the Kingdom of Heaven, the 
Kingdom of Kighteousaess, Justice and Peace will have 
begun upon our sin sick world. 

In endeavoring to focus in the mind of the reader the 
essential difference between the spiritual teachings of 
Christ and those of all spiritual leaders among the reputed 
saviours of the world in all historical annals before He 
manifested the human life, we shall have no difficulty in 
making this material difference plain and palpable. 

The Brahminical, Buddhist, Egyptian, Scandinavian 
and Hebrew religions had each a spiritual basis, which 
according to the spiritual stature of their devotees denotes 
their condition under various names, emblems, ideals and 
symbols which interpreted express great oversoul of the 
universe. Their measure of comprehending the spirit- 
ual we may not be able to judge of, but this much is 
evident, that though living in a purely sensuous and 
material age, where all the object lessons of their child- 
hood as nations must needs have been material, we find 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. ItfGERSOLL. 93 

among their leaders a most exalted spiritual stature, which 
can only be accounted for by such leaders having been 
older spirits who had manifested the human life oftener, 
"been born again" oftener, and were therefore better 
prepared to lead those nations in their spiritual infancy, 
for we find all the Christly virtues exhibited among their 
reputed saviours, inculcations to virtue, gentleness, meek- 
ness, justice, and abnegation of self, which must have 
received direct inspiration from the same Christly spirit. 

But after the first spiritual manifestations of these ear- 
lier peoples, when history and the Old Testament records 
begin to acquaint us with the Hebrew conception of the 
spiritual life, we find this life colored with the Egyptian, 
which had been derived from the Brahminical faith, and 
was striving to express a higher spiritual consciousness 
through their law-givers, Abraham, Moses and Aaron and 
through their inspired teachers and prophets, until Jesus 
came to manifest the mortal life, to crystallize this growing 
spiritual consciousness into enduring life. 

It is here the essential difference between Him and all 
other spiritual teachers is made manifest. He brought 
immortality to light, and focused the Kingdom of Heaven 
within the spirit of man. It was manifest by the life, and 
onlv in the life, and its fruits inculcated all the Christly 

beatitudes. 

It was so new a conception of spiritual science that His 
own disciples could not comprehend it while He was yet 
with them, and we find them continually looking for and 
expecting material aid and advantage, and even the devoted 
Paul while preaching Christ and Him crucified, could not 
so far overcome the spiritual coloring of his Hebrew 
education as to become so fully imbued with the spirit of 
this divine sentiment, as to preach the pure and divine 
law of love, and that " the kingdom of Heaven was within." 



94 REASON VS. REVELATIOX. 

But one interesting: and instructive fact manifest through 
all the childhood of spiritual life among Oriental nations, 
and coloring the Egyptian and Mohammedan religions, 
is the interior consciousness of a divine, guiding, omnipo- 
tent power to whom they were some way allied, and with 
whom they hope to dwell in the after life, the immortal 
life; the eternal home of the deathless spirit. 

It will naturally suggest itself to the reasoning mind, 
seeking for truth, that if there is so much of error in the 
theological view of the future life, whv has the Church so 
many million votaries and such an immense following? 
(We speak of the Church in the catholic sense.) It is a 
natural question and demands calm consideration. It is, 
in our view, because the human soul is hungering and 
thirsting after divine truth, after some stable knowledge 
of the i mm ortal life. This hunger of the spirit is deep and 
abiding, and wherever man has so far advanced in the scale 
of being, into a dawning spiritual consciousness, the crav- 
ing for this knowledge concerning its future destiny be- 
gins to assert itself with resistless force, and he peers out 
anxiously and beseechingly into the theological darkness to 
learn if there be aught to satisfy the hunger of the spirit. 

The stoical critic and the no God above reason devotee will 
attempt to account for this immense Church following by 
the desire for social position, or the hope to escape punish- 
ment for sin, whether fancied or real, by penance and 
worshipful reverence of sacred things, and while we admit 
these to be local factors in small degree, we sense in this 
reverential desire, the cravings of the spirit for some tan- 
gible proof, something upon which to lean, some satisfying 
assurance concerning the Beyond. Ah ! the Beyond ! 
Where is it, what is it? 

"Shall we know each other there?" this paramount 
thought burdens the anxious mind often with a burning 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. LNTGERSOLL. 95 

desire that can only be felt in its intensity, but never out- 
wardly expressed. The longing for immortality, the deep 
yearning for the loved ones that have passed into that 
Beyond, and the possible reunion with them ; and it is here 
that theology with its gloomy and monstrous errors comes 
in to confuse and distract the anxious mind seeking light, 
comfort and consolation. 

One faint whisper from a loved one who has passed into 
that Beyond to the human spirit ; one message that the 
spirit in the form recognizes as that of a departed friend, 
dissipates the theological darkness forever, and opens a 
rift in the dense clouds which have so long obscured the 
spiritual vision, and we hear and understand the language 
of one who typified all humanity, "Because I live, ye 
shall live also." 

It is to our mind one of the redeeming traits of humanity, 
that barring the many errors of dogmatic theology, her 
votaries cling so persistently to the shadows of spiritual 
truth, and grope on as best they may; and we have often 
visited her shrines and altars in the gray of the morning, 
in the deepest reverence to witness the communion of spirit, 
the simple trust, and the deep and abiding faith of her votar- 
ies, and we have said in the depth of our own inward com- 
munings, that all human souls are striving and yearning for 
the light of spiritual truth which in its revealings, even to 
their dim visions, immured as they are in the shadows, is 
calling around them the ministrations of angels who are 
leading them unconsciously toward the light of spiritual 
day. 

In closing this part of our theme, so interesting and all 
important as the destiny of the human soul, it may be prof- 
itable to traverse the ground so hastily gone over in our ar- 
guments, to focus in the mind of the reader the most salient 
features of the spiritual philosophy in its highest revealings. 



96 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

The foundations of that philosophy lie in man's relation to 
the great heart of being, the Infinite, and to His son Jesus 
Christ, as the expression of that infinite will and purpose. 
Each human soul for him or herself is receptive to this sen- 
timent of spirituality according to the light it has received, 
but when one has received a message from a loved one upon 
the spirit side of life and it comes to its inner conscious- 
ness as a verity, it passes from the region of speculation 
and doubt into a revealed knowledge that the human soul 
is immortal, and this is an enormous gain. Such com- 
munion cannot be denied because it is attested by millions 
of believers. It must not be denied by the Church, because 
their whole structure rests upon spirit intercourse. To 
deny it would be to deny all prophecy, all inspiration, all 
revelation, and if the unspiritual age when the Testament 
records were collated gave so much of truth concerning 
things spiritual, may not this far more spiritualized state 
of mankind give infinitely broader truths ? If the Church 
credits the conversation between Moses and Elias and the 
Saviour in the Transfiguration scene, or the converse of 
Paul, on his way to Damascus with Jesus then in spirit 
life, why may not mortal commune with spirit in this age ? 
Use 3^our reason and judgment in these things. It is the 
glamour thrown over all the incidents of Bible history by 
a mystic theology that has led people away from the simple 
truths as taught by Christ and practiced in simple faith 
by the primitive Christians. 

The false standard of Christian faith set up by Constan- 
tine in what was then termed the Revival of Primitive 
Christianity, followed up and supplemented by the Church 
of England and the Pope of Rome, led the common people 
from the simple faith of primitive Christianity into cere- 
monial observances and spectacular worship, while syn- 
ods and ambitious spiritual leaders formulated creeds and 



A REPLY TO EOBEET G. EtfGEESOLL. 97 

dogmas to lead the people directly away from the simple 
truth as given by Jesus Himself. Slowly is the human 
mind beginning to comprehend these errors, and its votaries 
are breaking away from the bonds of creedal thought, but 
behind all is a growing spirituality, based upon the spirit 
of the teachings of Christ. This spirituality is no myth, 
but a growing sentiment that is seeking expression in 
myriad forms. It is demanding justice and righteousness 
in all things. It is demanding justice to labor and more 
livable conditions. It demands mercy to the insane, the 
prisoner and the beasts that serve us. It is the awakening 
of that spiritual consciousness that in its augmenting force 
will embrace all humanity in its ample folds. It demands 
more than the golden rule, for it says : " Whatever thou 
wouldst have another to be, be thou." Be just, be true, 
kindly, merciful ; and it is this sentiment of growing 
spirituality that is preparing us for the life beyond, when 
the sheaves of a human life are garnered, when the cares 
and toils of a mortal life are over. 

" Sin forever left behind us, 
Earthly visions cease to blind us, 
Fleshly fetters cease to bind us, 
Oh ! 'tis Heaven at last ! " 

But it can never be the infinitesimal and impossible 
Heaven that has been fashioned by theology in its selfish 
conceptions of the future life, and every returning spirit 
bears this universal testimony that only as the human soul 
lives up to its highest light is it prepared to enter the 
spirit land, therefore : 

" Live to your highest light, 
Then there will be no regret 
When you enter the land of souls 
Where you cannot forget." 
5 



98 REASON VS. REVELATION". 

It is a surprising and humiliating position for the men 
of intellect, like Mr. Ingersoll, to occupy in the field of 
letters, with the avenues of information open to them from 
myriad sources, that they should take so entirely a super- 
ficial and physical view of spiritual things, and never 
seek to evolve from out the ocean of spiritual manifesta- 
tions all the way down the ages some rational explana- 
tion of these revelations to weave an hypothesis concern- 
ing their occult mysteries. It will not do for scholars in 
this age to evade such a manifest duty when the libraries 
of the world are open for their inspection. We can 
account for their neglect only on one hypothesis. The 
human mind is so constituted that in its blind zeal to 
espouse a cause, whether that cause be founded upon truth 
or error, upon fact or dogma, it runs to extremes. Hence, 
compared with numbers, education and advantages we 
shall find full as many bigoted liberals as superstitious 
bigots, and we make the statement from close and intimate 
personal observation. 

If these men of intellect would group together the facts 
of history plainly within their reach, concerning the 
spiritual experiences of Oriental nations, of Egyptian, 
Scandinavian and Grecian mythologies, of the spiritual 
conceptions of the Chinese, Hindoos and Persians, mani- 
festing the human life thousands of years before the 
Christian era, they would find a continuity of thought 
running through them all, concerning a great first cause, 
along with the central fact that every age had their 
prophets, seers and revelators who revealed to their dawn- 
ing spiritual consciousness so much of truth as they could 
comprehend or absorb, and that as the planet and man are 
growing into the spiritual life more rapidly in our age, are 
they receiving in larger degree new revelations, new truths, 
and a higher unfoldment of the spirits' powers ? Every 



A BEPLY TO ROBERT G. I^GERSOLL. 99 

new demonstration of science and every important inven- 
tion are so many milestones npon the highway of spirit' 
ual life that is linking the creature man with the Creator, 
the over soul of the universe, and yet, 

" The first atom that moved, the first muscle that gave 
evidence of life, the first words spoken through human 
lips were spirit manifestations, as much as the phenomena 
which to-day baffles and confounds the theoretic wisdom 
of the whole scientific world." 

It would, therefore, be wise for intellect in its self- 
hood and assumption of truth, to listen to the " still 
small voice" of the spirit in spiritual things, before being 
so dogmatic upon a subject so vastly important and 
upon which her votaries are so manifestly ignorant, be- 
cause spirituality is not the child of reason in any sense, 
neither does it come of observation or external educa- 
tion. 

We quote again from spiritual sources to clinch this 
important thought in language more cogent than our own, 
through the inspired lips of Mrs. Eichmond : 

" The knowledge that came to the Egyptians did not 
come by external education or outward observation, but 
the external observations were merely employed to verify 
to man's senses, to such as could not receive through the 
spirit, the truths that had already been declared, as the 
principles of life are those which relate to the spirit, and 
there we may trace whether it is in the ancient Egyptian 
ritual, where it is strictly preserved as the knowledge of 
things divine, or whether we follow it down through India 
and China, through the Brahminical faith, or whether 
we take up the Zoroastrian faith, and into Persia trace 
the secret elements that were but symbols of this divine 
right. 

" Whatever was occult in the ancient time pertained to 



100 REASON YS. REVELATION. 

the spirit, as the meaning of the word life in every ancient 
language is the inbreathing of the soul ; whatever was 
not occult was merely mechanical, experimental, and was 
wholly secondary to the power of spirit as personated 
in those endowed with the gifts of knowledge by the 
gods. 

"Every ancient record makes half deiflc. half mortal, 
the beings who gave the primal truth unto the world, like 
Hermes. Those primal truths have not only been per- 
ceived a priori in every age, but if properly interpreted 
have been given in almost the same language in every age- 
The perception of truth is occult, its demonstration to the 
senses is intellectual merely. 

"This perception of the primal principle of truth in 
the universe must have existed in every age, for even 
scholars begin to understand that the records of antiquity, 
instead of being merely records of superstition and the 
result of bigotry and ignorance, contain in themselves the 
same essential elements of divine truth." 

Because there has been much of error mixed up with 
spiritual phenomena in the past, it does not militate 
against the rich nuggets of truth which are hid among the 
chaff and debris of mythologies and theologies. The 
diamond is ever the gem of truth to be sought for and 
prized for its intrinsic value. 

A great and wise spirit has expressed the thought to us 
in simple language : 

" Although there has been much of error taught in the 
past, yet the truth has always been hidden in the error, 
and the new error grows out of the old as surely as the 
branch grows out of the root and the fruit from the 
branch. The root is never the branch, the fruit is never 
the branch, the one predicates the other, you cannot have 
one without the other. You could not now have the 






A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 101 

truth had there been no teachings of error ; therefore, turn 
jour faces as a flint toward the future, or never look into the 
past save that it has been the perfect foundation of all truth, 
all good of whatever nature or condition. It is impossi- 
ble for any to know the perfect truth, for the reason that 
no human brain can yet contain the perfect truth ; there- 
fore, it is needful that you should have great faith where 
you cannot see, that you may grow into all truth, all 
knowledge. He who has great faith grows rapidly, while 
he who has no faith must suffer until he grows into 
faith, where he can accept whatsoever he cannot see." 

We should feel that we had made an unpardonable 
omission in discussing this vital problem of immortality, 
not to advert to the childish theory of evolution, as ap- 
plied to the human spirit. 

It always seemed to us that the giants of intellect who 
claimed to discover primordial truth in evolution, as ap- 
plied to the presence of man on the planet were perpe- 
trating a huge joke, akin to the "Discoveries in the Cen- 
ter of the Earth," by Jules Verne, which was simply 
written to amuse. Like all errors which we have just re- 
marked upon, "there is a truth in the error," and this is 
that higher forms of life are evolved from the lower or- 
ders of beings, from animal life and vegetation, but never 
from the spirit or organism of man. That remarkable 
horse of science, and upon which the prophets of the 
new dispensation builded so triumphantly to prove the 
evolution of species, is found carved upon Egyptian arch- 
itecture six thousand years old, as perfect as the horse of 
to-day ; and that still more remarkable ape may be found 
in the jungles of Africa no further developed than at the 
gray dawn of historical records. True, the Zoological 
Garden at Central Park has succeeded measurably in 
evolving a higher grade of monkey out of the obtuse or- 



10 2 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

ganism of the chimpanzee, but his "plantation manners" 
are nearly the same as in his native bush. 

The pantheistic idea of a divine power is best expressed 
by Seneca when he asserts that, " God and matter are the 
two principles of all being. God is the active principle, 
matter the passive: God is spirit and all souls are part 
of this spirit," 

Seneca, representing then as now the pantheistic senti- 
ment of the age, spoke wiser than he knew, for while he 
held the philosophy of a supreme intelligence in the con- 
crete, he, by such logic, shadowed a being of individualized 
powers and functions, of which the human spirit in its 
personality is an atom type, an individualized expression. 
The human body even is ever true to itself in every 
function of its being. These functions, while mutually 
dependent upon each other in their harmonious action, 
cannot be evolved out of other or lower forms of life, but 
retain their individualized parts unalterably, so that it is 
a common axiom that there are no two human souls alike 
on the planet. 

If evolutionists would say that man is made up in his 
several attributes of all the elementaries of animal life, 
that he expressed those attributes subjective or dominat- 
ing, the common mind could apprehend the fact; but man 
is an atom type of Deity, never was evolved from any- 
thing less than the deathless and indestructible spirit en- 
shrined in a mortal casement. 

"So God created man in his own image, in the image 
of God created he him." 

Whenever ancient history bears record concerning the 
presence of man on the planet it is always against and 
never sustaining the baseless theory of evolution, which 
would link man to animal life. Great souls like Buddha 
of India and Confucius of China, manifesting superior 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 103 

lives, the peers of any living prophets to-day, oppose this 
theory by the impress they have made upon human so- 
ciety, and so do the Aryans, a nation manifesting superior 
lives among a semi-barbarous people thirty-five hundred 
years before the Christian era, in Central Asia. They 
were highly enlightened, and became a power in the Orient 
because of their sterling virtues and learning. They were 
highly civilized and very moral and intelligent. They 
were agriculturists and builders of cities. They understood 
the use of the plow, possessed many of our carpenter's 
tools, as the auger and hammer. They had doors, windows 
and fire-places in their houses, and ate meat and cooked 
their food as we do now. They wrote the Yedic hymns, 
evincing great spiritual progress, erudition and literary 

taste. 

Here we have a people nearly as enlightened as our 
own, manifesting the human life five thousand years in 
the past, and we refer to these peculiar people to prove 
that there is or can be no standard of human advancement 
based upon the fallacious reasonings of evolution. 

Let us remember that the divinity which has given to 
the insect the instinct to delve into the sand and bury its 
tiny egg, or the worm to bore into the tree and deposit its 
seed, has made like conditions for man and the planet, 
without even the movement of a grain of sand left to 
chance ; therefore are all things visible and invisible oper- 
ating under divine law, from the atom to our own com- 
plex world with its wondrous mechanism, circling placidly 
on its orbit, and moving grandly, majestically and har- 
moniously in space. 

Law, divine law, with its myriad spiritual motors oper- 
ated by an invisible power, guides all things whether of 
matter or spirit, from the atom to the planet itself, and not 
a tiny flower germinates, blossoms or perishes by chance. 



104 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

Verily, " The very hairs of your head are all numbered. 
Fear not therefore, for ye are of more value than many 
sparrows." 

There is no one tenet of the spiritual philosophy more 
strongly emphasized than the necessity for the human 
soul in living the material life to be literally true, to be 
governed in its contact with the world by the light within, 
conscience, the voice of God ; and the hnman soul that 
has so sufficiently grown into the spiritual that it can walk 
by this light, though it may seem alone for the time, will 
draw a large following among those who are seeking this 
divine light. 

This divine tenet has been so forcibly illustrated in one 
of the many spiritual lessons given by an ancient and 
wise spirit in our hearing, that we hasten to place it 

" Where the world may read," 
as a golden apple of wisdom, a guiding star for those who 
are reaching out after truth through the mists and shadows 
of artificial life : 

" Truth is a straight line ; they who walk in the path of 
truth never lose their way, and their feet never stray. It 
is very easy to walk in the way of truth ; he who walks 
therein does not carry heavy burdens, he never looks back- 
ward, never fears that he has made any mistakes, is 
troubled with no misgivings. They speak truly and wisely 
who say, truth is many-sided, but the way of truth is but 
one to each human soul, not many. It is because men seek 
to walk in some other way than in the way of truth, that 
they become confused, perplexed, anxious, and stumble by 
the way, and are continually looking backward to see if 
they are consistent to-day with what they attempted yes- 
terday. The way is so simple, that a child will not err in 
walking. Eemember that no human soul has any call to 
be true to anything but itself. The soul that is true to 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 105 

itself w true to its fellow-man and true to God. Eemember 
this, and your burdens will be very light, and the way will 
be very smooth. The soul that is true to itself needs not to 
take thought for the morrow ; the soul that is true to itself 
is true to every hour, every moment, every instant, and 
has no time or inclination to take thought for the next 
hour, saying nothing for to-morrow. If the human soul 
would learn this one grand, simple fact, to be true to itself 
every hour, every moment, every instant, life in this world 
would be very sweet; the burdens of poverty, of misery, 
of sickness, of terror, of remorse, of fear, would roll away 
like clouds before the morning sun. It is because man 
seeks out many inventions, many devices, many methods, 
by which to evade walking in the truth, that the burdens 
of life become heavier than it can bear. Eemember this, 
plant it in your heart, let it be your last thought at night, 
your first thought in the morning, and your strength at 
noonday, that no form of duty can call men away from 
this path of truth. Live in your own soul, let the light 
that is within be kept bright and burning ; then shall you 
see the way before your own feet, and will not become 
a stumbling block in the way of others. I would impress 
this upon your soul at this hour in such a manner that 
it cannot be effaced, I would brand it upon your body, I 
would burn it into your spirit; for the soul that is true to 
itself, simply true to itself, unconsciously opens a door wide 
in its own spirit through which the living light of God 
shines eternally and becomes a beacon light for the whole 
world. A human soul that seeks to be true to others, 
instead of true to itself, closes this door upon the light 
within, and is itself in darkness and causes others to stum- 
ble. Oh, strait is the way and narrow the gate. Yet when 
once opened it is wide enough for the angels and the arch- 
angels to come and go and bless humanity. 
5* 



106 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

" This is faith: being true to one's self ; it is the grain of 
mustard seed that grows into the mighty tree ; it is the 
little leaven that leavens the whole lump ; it is the key of 
all real knowledge ; it is the lever, yea, more than the 
lever — it is that upon which to rest the lever that shall 
move the whole world. Oh ! forget not this truth and 
your eyes shall behold wonderful things in the law ; forget 
not this truth, and your ears shall hear words of wonder- 
ful wisdom from within ; forget not this truth, and your 
feet shall stand upon a foundation that cannot be shaken ; 
forget not this truth, and your spirit shall shine out through 
your soul and body until your very flesh shall become 
illumined ; and life, peace, joy and rest shall flow from the 
world within to the world without, like a river whose 
source is in the eternal mountains. 

" The human soul that is literally true unto itself will 
often be unpopular with the world ; will very often be led, 
through following this interior light, into new paths, that 
are not accepted by the world, or the Church ; will often 
be led into ways that are diametrically opposed to the 
accepted condition of things ; will often be led to take a 
road that leads one out of the old ruts that society has 
followed, and which society is accustomed to running in; 
hence, you will see that the human soul, in being true to 
itself, may often be placed in a seemingly false position, — 
may, in following the light from within, be led over a dark 
and thorny way, or even a dark and stormy main, with no 
guide-boards, no beacon lights, because it may be a way 
never before traveled by any other human soul ; thus this 
human soul, in following its own light, may have its feet 
torn and bleeding, may even be shipwrecked so far as the 
world sees for the time, may be repudiated by its friends, 
may stand alone and solitary for the time, and yet it will 
in time become a beacon fire itself, a guide-board itself, 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. I^GERSOLL. 107 

over a new pathway, through an unexplored country, or 
it may even become a fixed star to guide others safely and 
happily over the way that was so dark and fearful and 
stormy to itself ; thus it is impossible that any should be- 
lieve, when they understand this truth, that the soul that 
is true to itself can under any condition be selfish. Yet 
I would say for your comfort and consolation, and the com- 
fort and consolation of all, that, at this day, the material 
world and the angel world are so near each other that it 
is impossible for the human soul that is true to itself to 
sutler so bitterly as have those in the past who have been 
true to themselves. To-day, the human soul that is true 
to itself will of necessity reach out after and grasp the 
hand of the Divine, and he who grasps and holds fast the 
hand of the Divine, let his pathway be never so new, let 
the country be never so strange, and unexplored, will be 
guided safely and happily to his journey's end. There- 
fore be true to yourself." 

The lesson of the peculiar fitness of things in the make-up 
of man materially and spiritually should not be lost sight 
of in presenting the proofs of man's claim to immortality. 
It is our right, our bounden duty to study the bodily 
organism and its corollary functions, the senses, to better 
enable us to acquire a knowledge of wherein his peculiar 
make-up differs from animal life. But the surface reasoner 
will say, the animal sees, hears, tastes, smells, and has not 
a few of the reflective faculties in degree as has man ; 
granted. But where this degree terminates in animal life, 
there it begins to broaden and expand in man, almost 
without limitations, until man in degree aspires to the 
prerogatives of Deity in the inventive and reasoning facul- 
ties which are of themselves deific attributes. 

One startling fact that many eminent inventors, poets, 
musicians, and philosophers have frankly admitted, that 



108 EEASOK VS. EEVELATION". 

their peculiar gifts were stimulated into action from 
causes outside themselves, and which themselves normally 
could not comprehend or satisfactorily account for, should 
lead the thoughtful mind to ask with deep interest, whence 
comes this illuminating ' power to the senses, and whither 
the hidden force ? What subtle alchemy warms into en- 
during life these creations of the senses? — this creative 
power which allies man, the creature, with the creative 
force of the universe ; this atom type of the almighty 
power that hangs worlds in space with all their appoint- 
ments, all their functions as defined and absolutely neces- 
sary as are the varied senses to man. Can there be any 
other possible conclusion than that this subtle power has 
its hidden source in the infinite mind — hence must be 
immortal ? Every form of matter is enabled to reproduce 
other forms of matter, but only in kind ; each after its 
own kind, and no other; but that which we term the 
spiritual faculties is readily enabled to construct and 
create, and is therefore godlike. Hence those who are 
striving to account for everything from material sources 
in their arguments, must suddenly end with only other 
forms of matter, each after its kind. 

"If matter is the origin of life, then you must return to 
matter; the basis of material life, as the basic foundation 
of all existence must be materiality. 

"But the mind in the meanwhile is unaccounted for; 
is unexplained. To declare that the mind is the result of 
matter, when it not only proves its origin to be other than 
material, but exercises functions and faculties that do not 
belong to matter, is a false system of reasoning as man can 
possibly invent." 

Again, we are led to another of the inspired lessons 
of wisdom through the guides of Mrs. Richmond, which 
come in the form of concurrent revelations. 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 109 

" Everything in nature responds to the source from 
whence it sprang ; so mind, or spirit, or intelligence must 
have its source in intelligence or not at all. If it is simply 
an effervescence of matter then matter stultifies herself, for 
she produces no other element that is capable of analyzing, 
understanding, and classifying, or thinking of the source 
from whence it sprang. "No other order of intelligence in 
the universe excepting human intelligence, is aware of 
knowing anything. Now mark well our words. The 
horse or dog knows something, but it does not know that 
it knows ; the elephant knows something, but it does not 
set itself apart from itself to endeavor to understand and 
explain itself. Human intelligence not only knows, but 
wonders why it knows, and man is conscious of a long- 
ing, a thirst and hunger within him that demands the why 
and wherefore of the knowledge that he knows. This 
thirst and hunger is the evidence of thought and the source 
of it. 

" This quality of the spirit in man is not simply the 
power of existence, for that belongs to every order of 
existence beneath him. It is not simply the power of 
consciousness, for consciousness belongs to all animal life ; 
but it is the power of knowing that he has consciousness, 
of being and of realizing it ; and of setting himself apart 
from that consciousness and wondering why he knows. 
He not only wonders why he exists, which very likely the 
dog, horse and elephant never do, but he endeavors to 
understand the source of his intelligence. So this sublime 
consciousness in man, this thing which is aware of being 
conscious, this light within a light, this intelligence that 
governs all intelligence, this spirit that acts upon and 
through all other functions is, in our opinion, the illustra- 
tion of itself ; proves its own existence by the very question 
that it asks ; and if there were no spirit in the universe ; 



110 REASON YS. REVELATION. 

if it were possible for man to exist as a human being with 
consciousness, with the senses, and with all the faculties 
that he now has, and yet could not ask the question why 
he exists, you might say this consciousness is the same as 
that of the dog and horse, or the same as the generic orders 
of existence everywhere. But man sets himself apart 
from himself, he analyzes the physical body ; as far as he 
knows there are no physiologists among the elephants, 
horses or other animals ; as far as he knows there are no 
anatomists among them, they do not dissect their bodies 
to find out how they are constructed ; they do not under- 
stand the physiological construction of their own organ- 
isms ; though they know how to use their bodies, though 
they have organic instinct, they have no knowledge of 
knowing how they use their physical bodies, of knowing 
how those physical bodies were constructed. This desire 
to know how their organisms are constructed belongs to 
no class of intelligence excepting the human embodied, 
or disembodied. So man sets himself apart from his body 
to endeavor to analyze the physical structure. The organ- 
ism is an open book to him now, so far as its physical 
properties are concerned; he understands every nerve, 
every riber, every bone, and he has given these all names ; 
then he endeavors to understand the why of this; he 
analyzes the bones, he finds the structure and ganglic 
centers, the nerve cells, he traces the brain to its formation 
in cells, endeavors to know whether the process is purely 
physical, or whether there is something a priori that en- 
ables that purely physical organism to think. The fact 
that he as an intelligent man sets himself apart from the 
structure of the brain, and the nerves, and all the senses 
and endeavors to understand why he thinks, why he acts ; 
the fact that he knows that he has knowledge and can add 
to that knowledge ; can increase it from its source ; the 



A EEPLY TO KOBEKT G. I^GEKSOLL. Ill 

fact that lie seeks for higher knowledge is in itself evi- 
dence of a power that moves the organism to feel, to think, 
and to do. It is, therefore, the spirit which impels the 
human organism to think of the organism ; it is the spirit 
that impels the brain to take cognizance of the brain ; it 
is the spirit that impels man to think of spiritual things. 

Let us illustrate this still further. You have not the 
slightest idea that if there were no light in the universe 
any one would ever have eyes, there would be no object 
in having eyes. There are vibrations of light which the 
eye perceives and which may have existed thousands and 
thousands of years before the eyes were here to see them ; 
but the eyes could not exist before there was any light, 
showing that the source of the things to be perceived 
must create the faculty to perceive them. The fact that 
there was light, and that light possesses certain properties 
that make all the organisms converge toward the produc- 
tion of vision. When vision was formed it was through 
the result of long ages of vibration that preceded the 
vision ; every atom had to be vivified millions of times with 
rays of light, all structure beneath man had to be made 
to approach that vision. While the human vision is far 
from perfect, undoubtedly it will be true that the coming 
race will see better than you, they will have a more per- 
fect lens ; it will be because matter has grown more and 
more accustomed to being vivified by this light, the vision 
will grow more and more perfect in accordance with itself. 

" Nor do you for one moment suppose that if the uni- 
verse were absolutely silent there would be any organ of 
hearing. It is because of sound, which is a continuous se- 
ries of vibrations, that the construction of the ear has been 
so fashioned that the vibration can be caught upon the 
tympanum of the ear and again conveyed to what ? The 
sensorium, which is the center of the nervous system. If 



112 REASON YS. REVELATION. 

there were nothing there to hear that which is conveyed, 
what would be the use of the ear ? The consciousness and 
intelligence of man perceives the divisions of sound, and 
has enabled him to know that there are millions of these 
vibrations going on continually. But you could not pos- 
sibly imagine an organism with hearing in a universe of 
silence. 

" Fishes in the Mammoth Cave, as you know, have no 
eyes. Why ? There is nothing for them to see ; no light 
being there, eyes would absolutely be useless. If you 
were to dwell continually in darkness, generation after 
generation, your eyes would gradually fade and fall away ; 
there would be a whole race of blind men and women. 
Now, apply this to spirit. Do you suppose man would 
think, if there were nothing to think about? Do you 
suppose the power of aspiration would be in him if there 
was nothing to aspire to ? Can you for one moment con- 
ceive of a human spirit aspiring to an immortal existence 
if there were no immortality ? Nature does not destroy 
her resources ; she does not stultify herself in any other 
department ; she does not give people faculties that can- 
not be exercised ; she encourages man to the fullest extent 
to exercise his bodily faculties and make his physical 
organism perfect. If there is hunger in the body, there 
is food to satisfy that hunger. If there is no food, he has 
hands to labor with to produce the food, and a mind that 
gives energy to the hands and employs his labor to the 
best advantage. All things within the physical world 
respond to man the moment his faculties make their ap- 
pearance. Now the spirit of man moves upon this organ- 
ism ; it performs the various functions that are necessary 
for physical existence ; it finds out the hidden resources 
of the earth, the treasures that are stored away in her 
bosom j it delves down into the coal mines, into the river 



A KEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 113 

beds for gold, and for all the treasures of earth ; it finds 
the pathway of winds and waves and makes these instru- 
mental in carrying forward the processes of life. 

" The intellectual life of man meanwhile has its own 
realm. Into the various departments of nature man not 
only wanders for physical reasons, but also for mental rea- 
sons ; he wants to know why the world was made ; he 
not only discovers that it is made in such a way, and that 
certain elements may be employed to do his bidding, but 
he wants to know why they are thus made. If it were 
not possible for him to know why, he would not ask the 
question; there would be no faculty within him that 
would prompt him to ask the question, and this great 
mind with which he is endowed would not stop to inquire 
why. He would simply gather the treasures of earth and 
he would then be reabsorbed into his final sleep, his mind 
would be contented and he would be satisfied with that. 

" The fact that he anticipates expressions in another 
realm, the fact that he wants another realm, is evidence 
that there is another realm. 

"Man desires to know if his intelligence shall live after 
the body has perished. As he has always wanted to 
know this from the beginning of human history, and as 
far as you know, has known it measurably, the fact that 
he asks the question once proves that there must be an 
answer to the question somewhere. Whatever remote 
period of time it was when man first thought of existing 
beyond the death of the body, that was evidence that 
there is an answer or he could not have thought of it. 
From whence came that desire for immortality, from 
whence came the first questioning about a future life ? You 
do not see any evidences of it in the animal kingdom ; 
the dog gives evidence of affection, but he does not give 
evidence of a wish to know whether there is any life be- 



114 KEASOK VS. KEVELATICXN". 

yond the body, nor does he give any evidence that he 
lives at all except in the physical law, in the conscious- 
ness of being, which is in every form of being that has 
consciousness. 

" "With man it is different ; he not only aspires to all 
possessions in this world, but he thinks of another realm, 
an inner life ; sometimes it is perpetually before him ; he 
realizes that he has faculties which he cannot use here ; 
he understands that the body is feeble compared to the 
mind ; he comprehends that only through imagination, 
and the consciousness and the vastness of the human 
spirit can he aspire to this higher knowledge ; he realizes 
that when his body is walking his mind is going on be- 
fore ; when his mind seems to follow there is something 
in the spirit that precedes it ; there is an internal con- 
sciousness. 

" This is what we call the very best evidence of man's 
spiritual existence, not only here but in the future state. 
Now we claim that this spirit is the source that prompts 
the intelligence in man, that manifests a power beyond the 
organic life and that which surrounds it. We claim that 
this spirit asserts and proves itself, that the faculties in the 
human thought, in the human mind, which are beyond 
the exercise of the senses, are the faculties that his spirit 
has endowed him with, and they are the result of a realm 
which as yet is comparatively unknown, but which is being 
more and more demonstrated to the world every day. 

" Keligions of past time in their primal revealment have 
shown, the nature of the human spirit, and in some degree 
have revealed the existence beyond death, and if you have 
a correct record of them entirely free from misrepresenta- 
tion and human creeds, you would no doubt find that the 
history of man's spiritual experience is just as distinct a 
history as the history of any science, as the history of any 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 115 

of the things which have transpired in connection with 
the spiritual life ; but you have great difficulty in reaching 
this history because it has been handed down to you 
through the creeds of different religious denominations ; 
and the different Church lines have been so closely drawn 
and the Church itself has established such a power, aud 
surrounded its authority with such strange barriers that 
the human mind has not been able to trace its history. 
But we know that there is a history, you know that that 
history is enfolded in mystery, the result of the protection 
of kings who have used this for their own individual am- 
bition ; but beyond that^ human life has demonstrated the 
power of the perception of spiritual things, the principles 
of morality, truth, integrity, honesty, which in themselves 
are purely ethical ; which do not belong to the physical 
realm at all, of which there is nothing in matter, as such, to 
teach you. We will prove this : the law of physical nature 
is, according to the most accepted scientific proposition, 
the survival of the fittest ; the survival of the fittest seems 
to be the survival of the strongest. In all nature that 
which is weak gives place to that which is strong, until 
you come to those organisms that are more finely attuned 
and perfected ; when you reach these, another law seems 
to intervene ; while it is true that there is a violent absorp- 
tion of the weak by the strong, as manifested by purely 
physical organisms, when you reach the organisms that 
have the finest nerve structures, when you begin to realize 
the formation of the brain tissue and cell, then the organ- 
ism that is weakest (physically) becomes the strongest 
(mentally) and proceeds to subdue the organisms that are 
stronger and larger in size. When you observe man, there 
is no being born upon the earth so weak in its infancy as 
he ; he has no incipient wings wherewith to fly ; he has no 
clothing to protect him from the elements ; he has no abil- 



116 REASON VS. EEVELATION. 

ity for walking until he is several months old, he has no 
house and no means of getting food, while the little chick 
bursting from the shell, in a few hours goes about endeav- 
oring to find something to eat. The faculty which enables 
man to change this, to take advantage of and to conquer 
the whole realm beneath him, to take of all the substances 
beneath him what he wishes for his food, to take from the 
nature around him what he requires for his habitation, and 
to take from the realm within him what he requires for its 
adornment and decoration, proves that where the law of 
nature stops, which in itself is physical, another law inter- 
venes ; that is the spirit, where intelligence begins to take 
the place of force, where the power of man's moral nature 
takes the place of mere physical conquest. 

" You can trace this in the history of the human race : 
man's physical nature is absolutely without moral or spir- 
itual perception. You see that in the brutal things that 
are done in your midst ; you see that in the conquest physi- 
cally of one race over another; you see that in the things 
that man does to the nature around him, to the beasts that 
bear his burdens. But there his moral nature steps in, 
that tells him that mere brute force is not the strength 
that conquers the universe. He has chained the lightning 
but he has not done it by his physical power, he found the 
elements too subtle, he must overcome them with mental 
force; he has succeeded in imprisoning steam until it bears 
his burdens across sea and land ; he did not do it by brute 
force, but by finely constructed mechanism that was out- 
wrought from his brain ; the snorting steam-engine. It is 
not simply powerful because it is strong ; it is strong be- 
cause of the process of the mind which is behind it. It 
cannot possibly go alone. The skilled engineer is behind 
the power of the locomotive, his thought is on the alert ; 
if left to perform its work alone this monster will shriek 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. LNGERSOLL. 117 

and storm a moment, and then go back to mere brutal dust. 
The thought of tbe engineer in constructing and controll- 
ing the steam-engine, becomes the burden bearer of the 
world, and the spirit of man, invisible though it is to any 
physical sense, is the power that now moves ships across 
the seas, the railways across the continent, makes the 
winged lightning obey man's bidding ; is the power that 
will make still further the elements that are around obedi- 
ent to man's behest. 

"The power that enables us to lift the hand of this 
medium will one day encircle and enable you to move 
around the world." 

Hence, how absurd and childish is it for vaunted 
science, in her utter ignorance of spiritual laws, to attempt 
to account for the facts of spiritual phenomena from 
material reasonings. Inert matter only as it is breathed 
upon by the Divine Spirit is powerless to do aught but 
exist. However comely may be its form, it is simply cold 
and lifeless chiseled marble compared with the human 
form clothed upon with its spiritual vestments, breathed 
into its pulsating channels the breath of God-life, eternal 
life. 

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, 
and man became a living soul" 

There is a widespread interest at this time in the many 
forms of healing — erroneously termed magnetic and 
spiritual healing and Christian science — which we desire 
to traverse, because it especially involves the philosophy 
of spirit in its higher revealings, which scientists and the 
men of reason look upon with such disdain as the essence 
of credulity. 

Now as to the facts of such healing : It would be futile 
to deny that they are transpiring around us in startling 



118 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

and remarkable phenomena, as we have remarked upon 
in former statements. The point at issue is, how are 
they performed, and by what subtle processes are the sick 
restored to normal health ? Among the different schools 
which are growing up in our midst there is little accord as 
to methods, and the secret power that accomplishes the re- 
markable cures. The terms " magnetic healing," " spiritual 
healing," " Christian science," and " Divine science," are in 
a measure misleading even to those who practice their occult 
powers. Many of its apostles practice an innocent dis- 
sembling, because they well understand that it is through 
spiritual power that they are enabled to perform the cures, 
but having their living at stake they fear to acknowledge 
the real source, and they are measurably excusable. Mag- 
netic healing, so termed, while it borders largely on the 
spiritual, may be and is practiced by those who claim no 
spiritual power, and yet this subtle element is a function 
of the spirit. Let us explain. We are taught in the 
spiritual philosophy that in the make-up of the human 
organism there is a body and spirit, the body being simply 
the vehicle for the spirit to manifest in, to operate through 
in experiencing the human life. There is a blood circula- 
tion well understood by science, and a nerve circulation not 
understood, because when the spirit leaves the body science 
may not detect or analyze it. This nerve circulation 
is the chief function of the spirit, the motive power 
by which the spirit acts in controlling its organism, the 
body, and it is this function of the spirit which a simply 
magnetic healer acts upon, in performing cures of purely 
nervous disease. We have personally witnessed the cure 
of a withered arm (so called) of long standing, by a mag- 
netic physician of strong magnetic power in manipulating 
the arm until the magnetic currents were restored to normal 
action. The withered arm had been caused by the derange- 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 119 

ment of the nervous system, so that the nerve currents 
could not circulate freely, and this is all there is of mag- 
netic healing, and as nervous diseases in our age form a 
very large proportion of the ailments of mortals the field 
is wide, and the gift of the magnetic healer is of the first 
importance. Personally we have used this form of mag- 
netic healing for many years for neuralgia in the head, and 
with entire success after all medical skill failed to give 
relief, and as neuralgia belongs specially to the nervous sys- 
tem, the action was direct, and the nervous currents were 
again made to assume normal relations. This is magnetic 
healing, and is little understood by many who practice 
its occult mysteries. But it is a function of spirit notwith- 
standing, and when reputable physicians after exhausting 
all their medical skill, recommend their patients to manipu- 
lators, as they are pleased to term these spiritual healers, 
it would be wise for them to ask, whence this occult power. 

But in the realm of spirit we shall find deeper problems 
still, problems that will assuredly lead us into the very 
aura of divinity. 

We will traverse first the cures that were performed by 
the Saviour and later on by His disciples. It has ever 
been one of the unfounded assumptions of dogmatic the- 
ology that all spiritual ministrations ceased with the death 
of the disciples. Not so. Every age has its revelators of 
divine mysteries, its inspired prophets, its illumined mes- 
sengers. Did not the Master so promise, and are they not 
transpiring in degree all around us ? What was the mean- 
ing of these words, " Yerily, verily, I say unto you, he 
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, 
and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go 
unto my Father. 

"And whatsoever ye shall ask in nry name, that will I 
do that the Father may be glorified in the Son." 



120 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

The healings of Jesus were operated under divine laws, 
spiritual laws, because Deity never contravenes His own 
laws. 

It was because Jesus alone understood these divinely spir- 
itual laws as mortals could not, that He performed such re- 
markable acts of healing and materialized food and wine 
from out their constituent elements ; therefore all these 
seeming miracles were in obedience to divinely spiritual 
laws ; but He strove to impress His disciples with the neces- 
sity absolute of looking to the same divine source by petition 
and prayer to His and their Heavenly Father to aid Him, and 
ever dependent upon the measure of faith were these mi- 
raculous cures performed. The reader will recall an incident 
in this connection (see 10th chapter Luke) where the sev- 
enty disciples returned to Jesus overjoyed at their marvel- 
ous acts of healing in His name, "And the seventy returned 
again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject 
unto us through Thy name." The term devils as herein 
used were the evil spirits, the obsessing influences, which 
had usurped the organisms of those who were healed, and 
the sick were like the poor wretch whom Christ found 
wandering among the tombs, again " clothed in their right 
mind,' 1 '' 

Again in the 10th chapter of Mark, where the Apostle 
John complains of a certain healer who was performing 
cures independent of the Disciples; where the Master 
mildly rebukes John, " But Jesus said, Forbid him not ; for 
there is no man who shall do a miracle in my name that 
can lightly speak evil of me," and it is to our mind patent 
that in many of the acts of healing by those practicing the 
divine art of spiritual healing, that the Christly virtues 
dominating in their make up, constitute, even uncon- 
sciously to themselves, the measure of success which fol- 
lows their ministrations. 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. ISTGERSOLL. 121 

Turn we now to another interesting phase of this divine 
science; when the Apostle Peter was practicing this divine 
gift in the city of Samaria (see Acts viii. 5), with remark- 
able results. 

"And there was great joy in that city. 

"But there was a certain man called Simon, which be- 
foretime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the 
people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great 
one. 

" To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the 
greatest, saying, this man is the great power of Gk>d. 

"But when they believed Philip's preaching the things 
concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, 
they were baptized, both men and women. 

"Then Simon himself believed, and when he was bap- 
tized, he continued with Philip and wondered beholding 
the miracles and signs which were done. 

" And when Simon saw that through laying on of the 
Apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given (ie. spirit power, 
an interpolation), he offered them money, saying, Give me 
also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands he may 
receive the Holy Ghost. 

"But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, 
because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be 
purchased with money. 

" Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy 
heart is not right in the sight of God." 

But the healing powers of Jesus over the Disciples, 
from being so entirely familiar with these spiritual laws 
was manifest. He alone understood those divine laws, and 
through His name was the occult power transferred to those 
who believed in His divine mission. This power of healing 
was instantaneously manifest where the women came behind 
6 



122 KEASOK VS. KEVELATIOtf. 

and touched the hem of his garment, and it was because 
of her abiding faith that she was instantly healed. (See 
Matthew ix. 20.) 

" For she said within herself, If I shall touch his garment 
I shall be healed. 

" But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, 
he said, Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath 
made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from 
that hour." 

An unswerving faith has very much to do in acts of heal- 
ing, and Jesus remarks this in many of His loving minis- 
trations : witness the Centurion who came to Him plead- 
ingly to heal his servant. (8th chapter Matthew.) 

"And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum there 
came unto him a Centurion, beseeching him. 

" And saying, Lord, my servant lieth home sick of the 
palsy, grievously tormented. 

" And Jesus said unto him, I will come and heal him. 

" The Centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not 
worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof, but speak 
the word only and my servant shall be healed. 

" When Jesus heard it he marveled, and said unto them 
that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found 
so great faith, no, not in Israel." 

Creedal thought, creedal forms and creedal teachings as 
represented in theology run naturally into superstitious 
worship, and lull into silence and acquiescence the strug- 
gling aspirations of the human soul for truth, and should 
be disassociated in the candid, truth seeking mind from 
pure religion. 

It is truly sad to see theology thus hugging her delu- 
sions of a Grod of wrath and cruel judgment, of an exclu- 
sive heaven for the favored few, of a special judgment 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. I^GERSOLL. 123 

day for the material body, along with the family of errors 
that have enchained her numerous votaries to the car of 
superstitious reverence for holy things, until 

" Wearied, from doubt to doubt they go, 
Welcoming fond credulity." 

Were it not for the eternal, ever living truths that lie 
at the base of her superstitious errors that are struggling 
so bravely for expression in true religion, it would be 
mournfully sad; but the gleam of inspiring hope that 
permeates the darkness of theology is the one and only 
redeeming source of her emancipation ; the teachings of 
Jesus Christ, pure and simple, and by this seed alone will 
the Church blossom out into pure religion in the fullness 
of time. 

Another unfortunate effect of superstitious teaching is 
that it tends to dissembling with the teachers themselves, 
who must from the natural evolutions of spiritual thought 
alone, feel that they are not teaching pure religion — and 
no greater purgatory can come to a public teacher than 
to feel down within the heart, that he may be teaching 
harmful error. 

Yes, pure religion that Christ taught, but never in the 
lore of dogmatic theology, the sentiment that is demand- 
ing a deeper expression in our age, is able to weld the 
nations of the earth into enduring peace, into material 
prosperity even for her suffering peoples. 

" Yes, and religion, much abused but glorified religion ; 
rescued from the debris, and darkness, and abuses of 
past ages ; religion, the crown of human aspirations, the 
queen of human guidance, the interpreter between the 
spirit of man and all the powers that are beyond ; reli- 
gion, enshrined in the mystic heart of ancient Egypt, 



124 REASOK VS. KEVELATIOK. 

with the god of light above, the mother earth, Isis be- 
neath, and the sacred transmission of light in the form of 
Horns flowing between ; religion folded in the heart of 
Brahma, revealed in the incarnation of Vishnu, shedding 
its light abroad on the earth by the universal chain of 
matter ; religion veiled in the mysteries of Sinai, or heard 
in its thunders that upon Horeb revealed its voice in those 
symbols that have been inscribed, but misunderstood for 
ages ; religion that in the lives of men and women has 
drawn them nearer and more nearer to the divine source of 
love, clothing them with aspiration, giving them knowl- 
edge of spiritual power ; enfranchised, redeemed, set free 
from the thralldom of bigotry, ignorance, darkness and 
misinterpretation; religion, the first-born child of the 
skies, will come under the light of spirit, clothed with 
this celestial fire, stamped with this sacred cross of divine 
revelation, and will say to the ancient Parsee : I under- 
stand the meaning of your flaming fire which rises up- 
ward, it is the symbol of the soul ; I know that that is 
but the symbol, as these words are but the symbol to ex- 
press the thought ; it is the symbol that under the fire of 
truth all dross is burned away and the spirit of man is 
set free unto the light of God. It says unto the Brah- 
man: I understand what you mean by the mystery of 
Brahma, and the light of Yishnu and the change of death 
called Siva ; I understand that Brahma is the pervading 
overruling good ; that Yishnu is the divine activity and 
intelligence within man ; the incarnated and perfect life of 
the soul, that Siva is the chain of external matter which 
can be destroyed, and passes in the form of dust. It says 
to the man of Judea, who has worshiped that name veiled 
in the mystic silence, I know what your Jehovah means ; 
it means all that future which the spirit declares ; it means 
the ever-living present clothed upon with the whiteness of 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 125 

intelligence; it means all that is past; and those three 
form the divine and palpable force of infinitude. It says 
to the Christian, bursting through the bonds of modern 
creed and the ancient Church of Eome, mother of all 
forms : I know what it means when you speak of the 
Mount of Olives, when the beatitudes were given ; when 
you speak of the Mount of Transfiguration, for each 
spirit is transfigured on the holy mount of truth in the 
presence of the best beloved witness ; I know what you 
mean when you speak of the form of Christ being buried 
and reappearing, for the rays of spiritual life have revealed 
that the form can reappear that seemed to be dead; that 
out of the wonderful alchemy of the atmosphere the sem- 
blance of earth forms can be fashioned and the loved can 
again return ; it means that there is materialization and 
resurrection such time as your dead return to you clothed 
in the habiliments of flesh, setting aside, or acting upon 
the so-called laws of nature until they produce to your 
vision that which you thought impossible. It means that 
under the light of this which pervades science, under the 
light that pervades mental philosophy, under the light 
that pervades all religion, that the seemingly insolu- 
ble elements are drawn nearer and nearer together, and 
under the divine crucible of the exterior, within the sa- 
cred presence of the alchemist of the skies, your lives are 
being wrought, and changed and refined ; not into the 
dross of earth, but into the fine gold of the spirit, into 
that transcendental treasure that shall not pass, but shall 
be yours in the kingdom of life eternal." 

The phenomenal growth of the spiritual sentiment in 
man in our age, is a sure indication that we are nearing 
pure religion, the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The Christ influence in the world is the beating pulse 
that declares and accelerates this spiritual growth, and is 



126 SEASON VS. KEYELATI02s T . 

melting into harmony and enduring life many of the 
warring elements of the human soul. 

This divine influence is the strongest evidence of the 
divinity of the ISTazarene ; and the careful student whether 
devotional in feeling, or only studying the subject as a 
scholar, must see reasons within reasons for that divinity 
exhibited in so many phases and forms just now in its 
spiritual infancy. 

Christ taught the divine laws of love and justice as has 
no other teacher ever taught, and He expressed these 
beatitudes in the life, the human life, and wherever these 
divine sentiments are struggling for utterance in the world 
there is the Christ influence manifest, whether it be in the 
faint whisper of justice to woman and equality before 
the law, in the guardianship of children and their protec- 
tion against evil, in shielding animal life from cruelty and 
abuse, in mitigating the rigors of capital punishment, and 
the efforts to banish the retaliation of life for life, in the 
efforts to abolish the fiendish rum traffic, in seeking to 
protect the wronged Indian from further injustice and 
spoliation, in the emphatic and persistent demands of labor 
for a small measure of justice, and even in the protests of 
anarchy against a venal system that is forcing them into 
abject forms of bondage to monopolies, in the pleading 
voice of mercy for the prisoner and the insane, and the 
universal demands for justice in all things, these are so 
many beating pulses to indicate unerringly the germinat- 
ing and chrysalis forms of the Christ spirit, for they are 
all of one and the selfsame spirit emanating from the 
infinite mind. Hence " Christ and him crucified, to the 
Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness," 
with their counterparts, dogmatic theology at one pole, 
and fallible human reason at the other, must become the 
head of the corner in the spiritual growth and unfoldment 
of the human souL for 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IXGERSOLL. 127 

" That command ' love one another,' 
Makes each human soul a brother ; 
Binds us all in one grand order, 
Master, 'Prentice, King and Priest." 

To sum up this phase of our very interesting and all- 
important theme : We have endeavored to segregate true 
religion from the various theologies which have been to 
the growing children of earth the crude conception of 
spiritual things that have served their purpose. To-day 
with all the spiritual light flooding the planet man, as a 
spiritual being with unlimited possibilities, is called to 
higher and more exalted conceptions of the infinite, and 
every element to which true religion is allied. Man above 
all things yearns and longs for immortality by all the 
subtle forces which are moving him toward this goal, the 
immortal life, and he will be satisfied with nothing less. 
Christianity, or that much of this abused name which has 
outlived the vagaries of superstitious worship and the 
idolatry of creeds, dogmas and ecclesiastical councils, has 
winnowed the wheat from the chaff of purely doctrinal 
assertions, "the commandments of men," and is preparing 
humanity for higher revealings of the immortal life. But 
even the vagaries of superstition and the idol worship of 
creeds has served a purpose in sheltering the grains of 
truth which have been germinating in the great heart of 
humanity until we have nearly reached the blossoming of 
the seed sown by the loving hand of the gentle Saviour 
two thousand years ago. 

Christianity came into the world with one and only one 
commandment, "Love one another." This is the lofty 
ideal to which every reformer in every sphere of effort is 
aspiring, consciously to himself or otherwise. It is the 
cornerstone of reformatory politics. The underlying senti- 
ment is justice to the toiler. It has broken the bonds of 



128 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

legal human slavery, and is enfranchising the slave from 
a chattel to a freeman. It is knocking at the door of 
kings and emperors and demanding a measure of justice 
for the oppressed. It is opening the ports of all nations 
and inviting them to become brethren. The Christ law 
of love and justice is leveling up, not down — even the 
modicum of the Christian religion that was infused into 
Mahommedanism when Mahomet went out to conquer the 
world to the sway of his imperial will, became a living fire 
that could not be quenched. Even the modicum of this 
Christ spirit which, buried within the husks of revolting 
theologies, is germinating into enduring life, and is bear- 
ing its rich fruitage, is opening the ports of distant nations 
and uniting humanity into a national family ; and when 
the great heart of humanity begins to beat in unison with 
this divine law of love one another, all injustice, war and 
poverty will cease forever. Let this be our fervent prayer : 

" Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it 
is in heaven." 

There is that in the spiritual philosophy in its higher 
revealings to the inner consciousness ineffably sweet and 
restful to the tempest-tossed mariner on the ocean of life, 
breathing into his despairing soul rest, peace, and conso- 
lation for the vicissitudes of the mortal life. None but 
those who have experienced its blissful effects can at all 
comprehend the feeling of rest which fills the soul as it 
contemplates the change called death. Before its divine 
effulgence all fear melts away, and the consciousness that 
death is only change — with the calm assurance that this 
change assures a better and truer life, — is to the burdened 
and weary spirit, 

" A star in sorrow and a flower in joy." 

Then comes the thought, dearer still, of reunion with 
the loved and lost, the home upon the other side, and what 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. I^GERSOLL. 129 

shall that home be ; your loved ones come back and tell 
you that your home on the other side will be fashioned 
by your own tastes, your yearning desires, your longings 
for the beautif ul, your aspirations for the true. 

What a restful and satisfying thought, and how com- 
pensating for the trials of a human life. In this blissful 
knowledge all the vagaries of creeds fade away ; all the 
childish superstitions of a man-made heaven, of a revolt- 
ing hell, of an angry God, and an eternity of uncertain 
conditions in that home to which all humanity must be 
consigned. 

When the spirit mortal has learned that there is no 
death, but only change, that to make this home his high- 
est ideal, it must be by blessing others in kindly acts and 
loving ministrations, by being true, upright, Christly, then 
will " Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done " become the 
Eden state of man on our redeemed and perfected planet. 

That we are nearing that blissful consummation let us 
hope, let us believe, let us strive for, and devoutly aspire 
to in living this mortal life. 
6* 



130 SEASON VS. REVELATION. 



SPIRIT VOICES. 

" How strange and yet how natural are the voices from 
the beyond speaking again to mortals in the old familiar 
way." 

u To be or not to be is not the question. 
There is no choice of life ; aye mark it well, 
For death is but another name for change. 
The weary shuffle off their mortal coil 
And think to slumber in eternal night. 
But lo; the man though dead is living still, 
Unclothed is clothed upon, 
And his mortality is swallowed up of life." 

Spirit Shakespeare. 



A Word from Alice Gary. 

Dear friends who sit in the shadow, 
And mourn for the loved and lost 

Who have faded out of your vision 
And joined the Silent host, 

Oh, hear my voice, I implore you ; 

Say not that they are dead, 
For they often come with the angels, 

And lay their hands on your head. 

They are no more dead or sleeping 
Than when they walked with you ; 

They live, they love, and labor 
Beyond the ether blue. 

And when their work is finished, 
And they seek for change or rest, 

They join the countless number 
Who come from the land of the blest. 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 131 

They corae and stand around you 

In the old beloved home, 
And seek in a thousand ways 

To make their presence known. 

They come at the twilight hour, 

At noon, at early morn ; 
They come to the old and dying, 

And to the babe new born. 

They come to the sad and happy, 

But most of all are they glad 
When it lies in their power to comfort 

The suffering ones and the sad. 



Divine Love. 

Oh ! child whose prayers reach up to our God 

That his hand will stay the chastening rod, 

Falling so heavy on the children of earth, 

That the day of their death seemed more welcome than birth. 

Know ye the soul with its trembling feet 
Is held in its place by a love so sweet 
By a power and wisdom so grand and divine 
That before it fades out all love of thine ? 

If thou canst feel for all human kind 
Such love and pity, oh ! foolish and blind, 
What must be the love of our Father and friend 
Who guideth and guardeth each soul to the end ? 

Spirit Mrs. Hemans. 



Gather the Wayside Flowers. 

O, cherish the human flowers 
That are scattered along the way, 

And help them to turn, their faces 
To the light of the brighter day ; 



132 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

Oh, help them to seek the sunshine, 
That gleams o'er the path of right, 

Till the shadows that lie about them 
Shall change to a glorious light. 

O many there are that are fading 

On the great highway of life, 
Falling, drooping and dying 

'Mid ceaseless care and strife. 
But there's never a little flower, 

Be it ever so humble or small, 
By our Heavenly Father forgotten ; 

He tenderly loveth them all. 

O ye who would serve God truly, 

And hear the words "well done," 
Stretch forth thy hand to his children, 

And gather them one by one 
Into the beautiful sunshine, 

Out of the shadow of sin. 
With a hand that is gentle and loving 

Tenderly gather them in. 

O then will the blessings of angels 

Be wafted to thee from above, 
And the light of their presence will guide thee 

In thy beautiful mission of love. 
And for the kind words thou hast spoken 

To the suffering children of God, 
A crown of bright flowers immortal, 

Shall be thy final reward. 

Spirit A. W. Spbague. 



The Maiden's Dream. 

SPIRIT, GOETHE. 

A fair young maiden gazed into a placid pool 

At her own sweet face ; 
A bud and flower grew on the brink, bent o'er 

Reflecting back their grace. 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 133 

She saw the beauty of her face and these, 

And said, " How fair they be : 
Will he in whom my life is centered 

Say as much of me ? " 

A little leaflet fluttered down from the tree above 

Into the stream, 
Distorting the lines of beauty in them all — 

Flower, bud, face serene. 

She sighed at the breaking of her vision by so small a thing. 
"Ah, me, Ah me," she said. 
" If his eyes were ever to behold me in this plight, 
'Twere better I was dead." 

Her eyes fell on the bud and flower all undisturbed, 
And then she cried : 
"My love will see and know and love me as I am, 
And I shall be his bride." 



A Message from Phxebe Cart. 

List to my voice, O friends, 

For I am over the sea ; 
I speak so faint and low, 

Unless you listen to me, 
You cannot hear my words 

Across the silent sea. 

I've come a long, long way, 
To bring a message to you ; 

When last you saw my face 
It wore a marble hue ; 

My lips were cold and dead ; 
To-night they speak to you. 

Yes, I am speaking to you, 

Speaking through a woman's hand, 
As I often spoke with my pen 

To many in the land. 



134 EEASOK VS. EEVELATION. 

To-night I am talking to you 
Through another woman's hand. 

The message that I bring 
I hope you won't forget, 

Live to your highest light. 
Then there'll be no regret 

When you enter the land of souls 
Where you cannot forget. 

Do you remember the words 
Of One, who long ago 

Lifted from this earth 
The burden of its woe, 

By giving his own life 

For the world so long ago ? 

" I am the way and light, 
Come and follow me; 

In my Father's house 
There many mansions be. 

Would thou find thy rest, 
Come and follow me. " 

Oh, friends, he is the way, 
The light of every soul, 

There is nothing in the earth 
That he doth not control ; 

The very Son of God, 

He guides each human souL 



A Mystical Deeam. 

One of earth's fair sons, 

Her great noble ones, 
Lay sleeping one night and dreaming ; 

Far out on the sea 

He seemed to be, 
The moonlight round him was streaming. 



A KEPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 135 

Out far from the shore, 

Without rudder or oar, 
His little boat seemed to be lifted 

By the long lazy swell 

As the waves rose and fell, 
And over the waters he drifted. 

He was not alone, 

For a maiden — his own — 
Stood beside him clasping his hand ; 

Her eyes full of tears, 

As she whispered her fears 
That they could not return to the land. 

But he pointed above 

And said, ' ' Dearest love, 
Fear not for we are protected, 

To yonder bright star 

That is shining afar 
We are forever connected." 

Then she saw in his hand 

A silvery band 
That she had not noticed before, 

And she knew that he could 

Whenever he would, 
Return with her to the shore. 

" Look upward," he said, 

' ' To this silvery thread 
That comes to us from afar, 

Through the mist and the haze 

And the moon's soft rays, 
It fell from yon beautiful star. 

"This thread so bright 

Which we see to-night, 
Clinging to our little boat, 

Is all our own, 

Guides us alone 
While over life's sea we float. 



136 SEASON VS. KEVELATION. 

Every child of the earth, 

From the time of its birth, 
Receives its own sweet ray, 

Each son and each daughter, 

On land or on water, 
Is led by night and by day." 

Then the bright thread broke 
And the dreamer awoke 
And sighed, " I have only been dreaming." 
But the angel said, 
"This shining thread 

Has a deep and a mystical meaning." 

Anonymous. 



Mob:nt:s"«- Light. 

SPIRIT MISS LANDON. 

The morning light was shining 

Softly from shore to shore, 
Creeping along the grasses 

Till it reached the cottage door. 
With long and slender fingers 

It reached through the stems of the trees, 
And kissed the purple violets 

That nodded in the breeze. 

It caught up the glowing color 

That fell from the morning stars, 
And flashed it along the heavens 

In shining golden bars ; 
It kissed the hills and mountains 

Till they blushed like a maiden's cheek, 
Then wakened the blooming flowers 

That slumbered at their feet. 

It dyed the billowy ocean 

Until each separate wave 
Seemed like a casket of jewels 

Thrown up from a secret cave ; 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. TSTGERSOLL. 137 

It lit up the long, low marshes, 

And swiftly onward crept 
Entering a chamber window 

Where a fair young maiden slept. 

There it paused for a moment, 

As ashamed of an act so bold, 
And was caught in her yellow tresses 

Till they seemed like a crown of gold ; 
It lingered, trembled and wavered 

As if it was half afraid 
To touch the heavenly features 

Of the sweetly sleeping maid. 

Then swift as a torrent 

Rushing down a mountain side 
It flooded the maid in glory 

And filled the room like a tide. 
One fair hand was lying 

Like a half-blown bud on her breast, 
The other the tangled ringlets 

To her glowing cheek was pressed. 

As the light touched the face of the sleeper 

And opened her radiant eyes, 
Her dewy lips half parted 

With a look of strange surprise. 
She gazed on the light for a moment, 

That filled the fragrant air, 
Then wrapped her mantle about her 

And clasped her hands in prayer. 

" O Father of love," she whispered, 

"I thank Thee for the light, 
And that Thou hast kept thy children 

Through the slumbers of the night ; 
I thank Thee for love and beauty 

And all the bright things I have known, 
But most, O God, I thank Thee 

That I am not alone. 



138 REASON VS. REVELATION. 

' ' For even while I am praying 

The angels are touching my hands, 
And I see my blessed mother 

In the midst of their shining bands ; 
She points toward the Heavens and says : 

' This world is very fair, 
But your morning light is darkness 

To that which is shining there.' " 



Not the Bridge of Sighs. 

One more fair mortal, 

Seeking for peace, 
Opened the portals 

That gave her release. 

Oh ! how her spirit 

The tumult did hate ; 
She sought through the universe 

After her mate — 
Sought him despairing, 
For no other caring ; 
Failing to find him 

Her soul could not wait. 

Life had no cheer for her 

Where he was not ; 
Death had no fear for her, 

Friends she forgot. 
There was one feeling, 
All others annealing; 

Him she must find. 
She would say in a whisper, 
She was sure that he missed her; 

Was she out of her mind ? 

Often his footsteps fell on her ear, 

Walking beside her 
When no one was near ; 

In accents of music 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 139 

Her own name was spoken, 

When she was alone, the silence unbroken, 

Tears in her eyes glistened 

While she lingered and listened. 

She was no sad one 

Escaping a curse. 
Friends, home, and fortune, 

All these were hers ; 
She loved her Redeemer, 
But she was a dreamer, 

So her friends said ; 
And they laughed in derision, 
When she told them her vision, 
And said that she saw 

And talked with the dead. 

Thus her young history 
Seemed fall of mystery ; 
Life had no meaning 
Save when she was dreaming. 

A deep, settled sadness, 
Some called it madness, 

Held her in thrall ; 
Young friends came near her 
Striving to cheer her; 

She turned from them all 
And said, ' ' He is calling, 
Come to me, darling." 

Her poor little feet 

Had strayed from their home, 
She was a stranger 

There and alone. 
The winds of life blew her 
Where nobody knew her, 
And often she said, 

In a voice full of pain, 
" Oh, if I were dead 

I could find him again." 



140 REASOtf VS. REVELATION. 

Her young heart was bleeding, 

Sympathy needing. 

I'm not complaining 

Nor any one blaming. 

The friends of the child 

Thought she was wild. 

Could they have listened 

Unto her visions 

They had rivaled the tales 

Of the olden magicians. 

Oh, what a wonder 

To make such a blunder. 

At last the sweet spirit, 

Weary of pain, 
Lost all control 

Of hand or of brain ; 
Restless, impatient, 

Seeking release, 
Her own hand opened 

The portals of peace. 
Had she lived longer 

A mad-house had been 
The door that had opened 

And taken her in. 

The beautiful features 

Of this saddest of creatures 

Wore a calm, placid smile 

When she was dead ; 

And every one said, 

"She is at rest, 

And it seems to be best." 

But she opened her eyes 
On fair, cloudless skies 
That she often had seen 
Before in her dream. 
A host of bright angels, 
Love's sweet evangels, 



A EEPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 141 

Welcomed her home ; 
But that dear other, 
Nearer than brother, 

Approached her alone, 
Gathered her tenderly 

Unto his heart, 
Whispering, ' ' My darling, 

We'll never more part." 

Spirit Thomas Hood. 



The Voice of Wisdom from an Ancient Spirit. 

A great and wise spirit had said (spirit voiced) concerning the 
warring elements of the human heart : 

"Let envy depart so far from you that its face when seen by 
you is a stranger. 

" Let jealousy flee away and hide herself, until she shall blossom 
in the darkness into love. 

"Let fear depart from you, and continue its travels until reach- 
ing around the universe it returns showing itself as an angel of 
trust and faith. 

' ' Center yourselves therefore in the divine, and reach out your 
arms toward every human soul, so that in the days that are coming, 
you can look back and say : 

" ' No man's tears are shed at my expense. ■ 

" ' No man's face blanches at the sound of my step. 

" * No man's darkness comes through my light. 

" 'No man's unhappiness is the result of my happiness.' 

"When you have thus overcome evil with good you will have 
laid the first step that leads into the temple of truth, broad and 
deep enough for all the nations that come after." 



142 SEASON VS. KEVELATIOtf. 



THE IDEAL AND THE EEAL IN THE CONCEP- 
TION OF HUMAN THOUGHT CONCERNING 
IMMORTALITY. 

" O tell us to what land unknown 
The soul of him we love has flown." 

" Say, has he reached some distant shore 
To speak with us on earth no more?" 

" There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body." 

The human soul longs above all else for some restful 
assurance of the future life, the immortal state. This sen- 
timent in itself is a shadow image of a reality, and it is 
this reality that urges the human spirit to seek for some 
safe anchorage as it finds itself buffeted about in the ex- 
periences of life. 

The hunger of the spirit in this direction leads it to 
seek many devices, many sources of knowledge, often 
leads it away from the teachings of theology which fail 
to satisfy its cravings for truth, and very often confound 
and drive it into the dark valleys of skepticism and final 
unbelief in the charts of creeds. It is this hunger of the 
spirit that lures the anxious and burdened mind to follow 
after the shadow images of great truths buried in fictions 
like " Robert Elsmere," in faint pictures of spirit life like 
the " Gates Ajar," or the more defined conceptions of the 
spiritual state reflected in the writings of George Mac- 
donald. 

The human spirit is famishing for some stable knowl- 
edge of immortality, something in which it may rest with- 



A REPLY TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 143 

out this uncertainty that necessarily pervades the teach- 
ings of theology, and it is just here that the beautiful and 
restful spiritual philosophy comes in, not to supplant the 
spirit of that theology but to interpret it in the light of 
new revelations of divine truth which the human spirit in 
its more illumined vision is enabled to comprehend and 
bear witness of as being true. 

" The pure fresh impulse of to-day 

Which thrills within the human heart 
As time-worn errors pass away, 

Fresh life and vigor shall impart ; 
New hopes like beauteous strangers wait 

An entrance to man's willing breast, 
And childlike faith unbars the gate, 

To welcome in each heavenly guest." 

" The new must e'er supplant the old 

While Time's unceasing current flows, 
Only new beauties to unfold 

And brighter glories to disclose ; 
For every crumbling altar stone 

That falls upon the way of Time 
Eternal wisdom hath o'erthrown 

To build a temple more sublime." 

From the fact, the indisputable fact, that every revela- 
tion concerning man or the planet has been given through 
the illumined thought of a mortal, where shall we look 
for still more abundant revelations save from the same 
divine source. 

The spirit world and ours are drawing very near together 
in the evolution of spirit and matter, until we in the mortal 
life begin to feel the quickening power of spiritual forces 
in every direction. It is this silent power that is inspir- 
ing the inventive faculties of man in so many startling 
discoveries of science. Electricity in all its corollary 



144 REASOX VS. REVELATION. 

functions is a spiritual motor which the human mind 
cannot analyze any more than the power that guides the 
magnetic needle, or the thought of man. They belong to 
the realm of spirit, and only as man attains a higher spir- 
ituality will they be revealed to him, because they are 
only spiritually discerned. 

But there are very many grand truths being revealed 
to him through spirit communion which unerringly indi- 
cate that the two worlds are almost running in parallel 
lines, and it would be the highest wisdom to listen to the 
sublime truths flowing through so many channels. 

Instead of some far-away heaven, incomprehensible 
from the thesis of theology, we shall find the beyond a 
real place, and not an ideal conception of theology. 

The occupations of spirit life are attested from so many 
channels, that to the mind even partially illumined they 
present proofs palpable of the spirit's home and surround- 
ings. 

Every spirit who songht the good of humanity in his 
lifetime is still more deeply interested in the problems of 
life, and is working, through mortals, to bring a higher 
good; working, too, with the illumined faculties of the 
spirit, and striving to usher in " the Kingdom of Heaven," 
the Kingdom of Justice and Eighteousness. 

On our planet no phase of sorrow, suffering, poverty or 
crime even but occupy their deepest sympathies and con- 
cern, and it is only through their superior knowledge con- 
cerning these warring elements that they are enabled to 
aid in making better conditions for humanity. In the 
impending struggle between labor and capital all the 
grand spirits who championed the right in earth-life will 
be found moving solidly for the emancipation of the 
masses ; and as a humble toiler in this field, if we were 
not conscious, nay, positively assured of such sympathy 



A EEPLT TO ROBERT G. IKGERSOLL. 145 

and aid from the spirit side of life, we should yield up the 
struggle in despair. 

We append a cheering message from spirit Daniel 
Webster to fortify our thought in this direction. 

" My Friends : You ask if I am interested in the affairs 
of those still in the form. Yes ; my interest in the affairs 
of all nations, and of the American nation in particular, 
has grown more intense every year since I entered into 
spirit life. 

" It is a mistake to suppose that man loses his interest 
in human affairs when he puts off his materiality ; on the 
contrary, his interest (if he ever had any) becomes inten- 
sified. A man is a man, not because of his form, but be- 
cause of his manliness. 

" What he was in earth-life he is on entering the land 
of souls. He does not change his nature, but after enter- 
ing into the new state he gradually unfolds his god-like, 
god-given attributes, many of which slumbered while he 
was in the form ; but he is the same man. Eternally 
divine in his origin, infinite in his possibilities, his des- 
tiny unknown. 

" What I was in earth-life I still am, only more illum- 
ined by higher truth. 

" America is the first among the nations of the earth to 
receive new revelations of divine mysteries through the 
communion of spirits, and this will be her salvation in 
the day of peril that is surely dawning for her. 

" America is on the eve of a great religious and political 
convulsion that will affect the whole world, and break in 
pieces all institutions not founded on justice and human 
rights. 

" The eyes of the civilized world are upon her, plotting 
and planning how best to take advantage of her seemingly 
falling fortunes. 
5 



146 KEASCW YS. KEVELATIOJT. 

" But the God of Liberty who first planted the infant 
colonies on a bleak, inhospitable shore, amid wild beasts 
and savages, and protected them from evils without and 
within, until they grew into a mighty nation, where all 
peoples can find home and liberty, will not deliver her 
into the hands of tyrants. 

"Liberty alone is worth striving for, but it is better to 
be born a slave than a tyrant ; the slave, through his own 
sufferings, learns to have compassion on his fellows, the 
tyrant never." 



Press of J. J. Little & Co., Astor Place, New York. 



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